
Class. 



Boolu__ 

PRESENTED BY" 



The Consciousness of Communion 
With God 



4 STUDY IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

BY 

GILBERT LEE PENNOCK 



(This thesis has been accepted by the Graduate School 
of New York University, in partial fulfillment of the 
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.) 




The Consciousness of Communion 
With God 



A STUDY IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

BY 

GILBERT LEE PENNOCK 



(This thesis has been accepted by the Graduate School 
of New York University, in partial fulfillment of the 
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.) 



Printed by J. Heidingsfeld Co. 

New Brunswick, N. J. 

1919 



/ A(tX 



Gift 
h?H 9 IS2Q 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 7-10 

Four typical cases cited 7-9 

The name given to the experience 9 

The questions suggested for investigation 10 

II. THE METHOD OF STUDY 10-11 

III. THE CHARACTERISTIC MARKS OF THE STATE OF 

CONSCIOUSNESS 12-19 

It belongs to the class of mystical states of consciousness 12 

The marks of this state according to James 12 

Its special characteristic — spontaneous 12-14 

Coe's characteristics stated and criticized 14-16 

This state is the undifferentiated state of mystical con- 
sciousness 16 

Discrimination of this state from the more advanced 

states of mysticism 16-18 

Note quoting Pratt's similar view 18-19 

IV. CAN THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF COMMUNION WITH 

GOD BE DISTINGUISHED FROM CERTAIN RE- 
LATED TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS ? 20-26 

Two closely related states : cosmic conscousness and 

aesthetic consciousness 20 

The nature of cosmic consciousness 20-22 

It is distinguished chiefly by content 22-23 

Aesthetic consciousness illustrated 23-25 

Hardly distinguishable from communion with God except 

by content 25-26 

V. THE CONDITIONS AND CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER 

WHICH THE EXPERIENCE IS HAD 26-30 

The conditions and circumstances so vary that no law can 

be traced 26 

The religious body is indifferent 26-27 

The personal circumstances are most various 28-29 

Emotion awakened by nature a frequent circumstance, but 

not universal 29 

The physical condition varies from extreme of health to ex- 
treme of weakness 29-30 

The mental conditions are equally various 30 



Chapter Page 

VI. THE EFFECTS AND FUNCTION OF THE EXPERIENCE 30-33 
The physical effects are almost never noted and described 

by the subjects; statement of the little that is known 30-32 

The mental effects : in general heightening of powers and 

energies 32 

This is indicative of the function of the experience for the 

individual 32-33 

The social function is the conserving of religion from decay 33 

VII. WHAT EXPLANATION IS TO BE GIVEN FOR THE 

EXPERIENCE? 34-62 

The difficulty of explanation 34 

Help is to be sought in explanations given for mysticism, 

but these must be used with caution 34-35 

Explanations of mysticism classified 35-36 

A. MEDICAL THEORIES, IN THE MAIN MATER- 
IALISTIC 36-38 

1. States of extraordinary well-being of the physical organ- 

ism — Hyperaesthesia 36-38 

The theory stated 36 

Criticism of the theory 36 

Hocking's refutation of a similar theory 37 

Conclusion as to applicability of this theory in explain- 
ing our subj ect 37-38 

2. The pathological view — Degeneration 38-40 

General statement of the theory 38 

Application of the theory by Nordau 38-39 

Criticism of the theory 39-40 

3. The theory of hallucination 40-46 

The states of consciousness under consideration rarely 

involve sensory hallucination 40-42 

Theory of psychic or pseudo hallucination as stated 

by Delacroix 42-43 

Consideration of its applicability 43-44 

May apply when preceding condition was one of men- 
tal tension 44-45 

Criticism of a detail of the theory, momentary dis- 
orientation 45 

Philosophical implications of theory of hallucination.. 45-46 

Possibility of "veridical" hallucinations 46 



Chapter Page 

B. PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES 46-60 

1. Automatisms : Self-hypnosis: "Extatic Intoxication" 46 

The nature of automatisms 46-47 

How it would apply to the experiences in question.... 47 

This illustrated by Dr. Prince's use of the theory 47-48 

Prince's theory of sudden conversions cosidered as a 

parallel type 48-50 

Restatement of the theory 50 

The need of a wider study to determine how far the 

theory would apply 50-51 

The implications of the theory for religion 51-52 

Automatisms usually imply some form of theory as 

to the unconscious 52 

2. Subliminal Invasions of Consciousness 52-58 

(a) The more common psychological view. 

Various theories regarding this region of mental 

activity 52 

Statement of my own view 52-57 

The nature and content of the subconscious 52-54 

Conditions favoring invasion of consciousness from 

this region 54-55 

More or less complete abeyance of consciousness. 

Intense concentration. 

Bearing of these principles on problem under 

consideration 55-57 

(b) The Psychoanalytical View 57-58 

Divergences of schools 57-58 

General theory as to mystical experiences 58 

The theory unconvincing 58 

3. The theory of Social Psychology 59-60 

Racial and cultural conditions determine partly the 

content of the experiences in questions 59 

Suggestion and imitation also work in some cases.... 59-60 
Theories of social psychology offer help in explaining, 

but do not offer whole explanation 60 

4. Attainment of a higher form of consciousness — first 

steps in a new stage of Evolution 60 

The theory purely hypothetical 60 



Chapter Pace 

C. PREDOMINANTLY THEOLOGICAL THEORIES... 60-62 

1. The Common Theological View 60-61 

This is the view of practically all those who have re- 
lated their experiences 60-61 

Psychology attempts to explain without recourse to the 

supernatural 61 

Illustration of theological view 61 

2. Theosophical and Kindred Views 62 

VIII. SUMMARY AND STATEMENT OF CONCLUSIONS.... 62-65 

The nature of the state of consciousness 62-63 

An interpretation is involved in calling it "Communion with 

God" 63 

The conditions and circumstances 63 

The effects and functions 63-64 

The explanations 64-65 

Subconscious centr&l 65 

CONCLUSION : 

The experiences not fully explained by medical and psychological 

theories 65 

APPENDIX I: QUESTIONNAIRE 66-67 

APPENDIX II: ON THE ANSWERS TO QUESTIONNAIRE.. 68-69 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 70-72 



The Consciousness of Communion With God 



I. THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM. 

The nature of the problem which is to be investigated in the fol- 
lowing pages may best be understood by citing at the outset a few 
typical cases of "communion with God." 

The first is the record of a case given by James from the manu- 
script collection of Professor Flournoy : l 

"I was in perfect health : we were on our sixth day of tramping, 
and in good training. We had come the day before from Sixt 
to Trient by Buet. I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, and 
my state of mind was equally healthy. I had had at Forlaz good 
news from home : I was subject to no anxiety, either near or remote, 
for we had a good guide, and there was not a shadow of uncer- 
tainty about the road we should follow. I can best describe the 
condition in which I was by calling it a state of equilibrium. When 
all at once I experienced a feeling of being raised above myself, I 
felt the presence of God — I tell of the thing just as I was conscious 
of it — as if his goodness and his power were penetrating me alto- 
gether. The throb of emotion was so violent that I could hardly tell 
the boys to pass on and not wait for me. I then sat down on a 
stone, unable to stand any longer, and my eyes overflowed with 
tears. I thanked God that in the course of my life he had taught 
me to know him, that he sustained my life and took pity on the 
insignificant creature and on the sinner that I was. I begged him 
ardently that my life might be consecrated to the doing of his will. 
I felt his reply, which was that I should do his will from day to 
day, in humility and poverty, leaving him, the Almighty God, to be 
judge of whether I should some time be called to bear witness more 
conspicuously. Then, slowly, the ecstasy left my heart; that is, I 
felt that God had withdrawn the communion which he had granted, 
and I was able to walk on, but very slowly, so strongly was I still 
possessed by the interior emotion. Besides, I had wept uninter- 
ruptedly for several minutes, my eyes were swollen, and I did not 
wish my companions to see me. The state of ecstasy may have 



1 Tames. Varieties, op. 67, 68. 



^ 



8 Communion With God 

lasted four or five minutes, although it seemed at the time to last 
much longer. My comrades waited for me ten minutes at the cross 
of Barine, but I took about twenty-five or thirty minutes to join 
them, for as well as I can remember, they said that I had kept them 
back for about half an hour. The impression had been so profound 
that in climbing slowly the slope I asked myself if it were possible 
that Moses on Sinai could have had a more intimate communication 
with God. I think it well to add that in this ecstasy of mine God 
had neither form, color, odor, nor taste ; moreover, that the feeling 
of his presence was accompanied with no determinate localization. 
It was rather as if my personality had been transformed by the 
presence of a spiritual spirit. But the more I seek words to ex- 
press this intimate intercourse, the more I feel the impossibility of 
describing the thing by any of our usual images. At bottom the 
expression most ,apt to render what I felt is this : God was present, 
though invisible ; he fell under no one of my senses, yet my con- 
sciousness perceived him." 

My next example is that of an English naval chaplain, W. J. 
Carey : 2 

"When I was eighteen years old, and a prayerless, unpleasant 
schoolboy, it came into my mind that it would be a good thing to 
run straight. I went into my room and knelt down to ask God to 
help me, for although 1 did not pray in those days, I had a good 
mother who had taught me to pray. As I knelt there, there flooded 
into my heart and soul such a light and joy and peace that, in my 
ignorance, I thought I was going to die of sheer happiness and 
glory. That irresistible, sudden, unexpected flood of light lasted 
for nine months, and continues intermittently till today. I do not 
lean on it now or bother if it departs, because there is at my dis- 
posal an undercurrent of never-ceasing companionship with God 
which never goes unless I sin. If I sin it goes out like the ex- 
tinguishing of a lamp, and leaves me in utter and intolerable 
gloom. . . ." 

My next instance is from that exquisite autobiographical frag- 
ment by Professor Rufus M. Jones, A Boy's Religion from Mem- 
ory? 

"God was just as real a being to me through my early boyhood as 
was any of the persons in our nearest neighbor's house. At home 
he was talked with every morning, and spoken of all day long in a 
variety of ways. If any sort of a crisis was near us his help was 

2 Carey, Have You Understood Christianity, p. 14. 

3 Pp. 97, 76-77, 103-104. 



Communion With God 9 

asked in as simple and confident a way as we asked a neighbor's 
help when we needed it." 

"Sometimes a real spiritual wave would go over the meeting in 
these silent times which made me feel very solemn, and carried me — 
careless boy though I was — down into something which was deeper 
than my thoughts and gave me a momentary sense of that Spirit 
who has been the light of men in all ages and all lands." 

. . . I had gone a step farther than usual, and had done 
something which grieved everybody at home, and I expected a 
severe punishment, which was administered with extreme infre- 
quency in our home. To my surprise my mother took me by the 
hand and led me to my room; then she solemnly kneeled down by 
me and offered a prayer which reached to the very inmost soul of 
me, and reached also the real Helper. No holy of holies could ever 
have seemed to the pious Jew more awful with the presence of God I 
than that chamber seemed to me. It was one thing to hear prayer 
in the meeting-house, or in the assembled family, but quite another 
thing to hear my own case laid before God in words which made 
me see just what I was, and no less clearly what I ought to be. . . . 
And though I was still far from won, I was at least where I could 
more distinctly feel the thread between my soul and the Father 
quiver and draw me." 

The last case I shall cite for the present is one communicated 
directly to me : 

"I had been trying for some time to decide whether to accept a 
proposal of marriage. 'Yes' would mean work and somewhat of a 
sacrifice of ease and luxury. I was sure of the worthiness of the 
man, but not sure that I loved him. More or less unhappy condi- 
tions in my home life made me afraid that I might marry merely to 
escape. Six months of indecision, and then came a time when, the 
answer had to be given. That night I prayed and thought for 
hours — and then when I was about worn out and still undecided, a \ 
presence made itself felt in the room. I almost seemed to see the 
figure of Christ, it was so real. I was not afraid — just happy — and 
I knew immediately that everything was settled for me, and that 
my way of life was completely changed. I fell asleep and woke 
with great happiness. Since then God has been very real to me." 

It will be noted that in all these cases the persons who have had 
the experience speak of it, or at least think of it, as communion with 
God. It may be admitted at the outset that this is an interpretation ., 
put upon the experience by those who have had it; but the question 



10 Communion With God 

as to the validity of this interpretation can concern us, if at all, only 
at the close of our study. It is enough to say that there is a state of 
consciousness to which the name "communion with God" is given by 
many of those who experience it, and that this name has been ac- 
cepted pretty widely. Our problem is to investigate this specific 
state of consciousness in order, if possible, to ascertain its laws. 
We shall have to attempt to answer some such questions as these : 

1. What are the distinctive marks of that state of consciousness 
called communion with God ? 

2. Can this state of consciousness be isolated and clearly dis- 
criminated from other states of consciousness, some of which have 
at least a superficial resemblance to it? 

3. What are the conditions and circumstances under which such 
experiences are had? Can we trace any laws as to the attendant 
conditions and circumstances? 

4. What effect does the consciousness have upon those who ex- 
perience it, or what function does it have in their lives? Has it 
further a social function ? 

5. What is the genesis and cause of this state of consciousness? 

Our study is to be psychological, not philosophical or theological. 
It may be worth while to point out at the very beginning that such a 
study has only indirect bearing, if any at all, upon theological and 
philosophical questions. Our study moves within the limits which 
psychology sets itself as an empirical science. Whether there be 
any immediate divine action upon the human personality in such an 
experience, psychology as psychology neither affirms nor denies ; it 
simply investigates the mental processes of the person who has the 
experience. In view, however, of the fact that many mental phe- 
nomena for which objective causation was formerly assumed are 
now known to be the result of subjective processes, it may be well 
to point out that we shall have to give a careful consideration to 
the question, Can this conscious state be explained in such a way, 
as the outcome of subconscious or unconscious forces? — an inquiry 
which may seem to trespass upon the domain of theology. 

II. METHOD OF STUDY. 

Ours must be the case method. That part of psychology which 
has to do with religion has never, as far as I know, followed or 
applied the experimental method. No one can upon order have 
religious experiences which allow of the quantitative and qualitative 



Communion With God 11 

measurements of experimental psychology, any more than for ex- 
perimental purposes he could fall in love and have his reactions 
measured. Nor can the statistical method be of any great value in 
such a study. The weakness of statistical conclusions based upon 
answers to questionnaires has often enough been pointed out. It is 
true that there are numerous pitfalls and liabilities to error in the 
study of cases — a study which by its very nature can never be 
exhaustive ; but no other method is available in the study of such 
experiences as we have to consider. 

In obtaining cases I have made use of such published material as 
came to my notice, whether cited in books on the psychology of 
religion or gleaned from reading in biographical and other litera- 
ture. I had hoped to get considerable material in answer to a ques- 
tion list, but the responses were disappointingly meagre. Few of 
those to whom the questions went actually described their experi- 
ences — which is the essential thing — although they answered ques- 
tions about their experiences. The latter may be of some value in 
answering some of the questions which we purpose to investigate, 
but will not go far. At most they may help in answering the ques- 
tion as to conditions and circumstances. For actual descriptions of 
the experience we shall have to depend chiefly upon published auto- 
biographical material.* 

Needless to say, such material cannot be taken simply at its face 
value. It must be subjected to careful scrutiny and criticism. Even 
then we cannot be certain of arriving at the whole truth. The 
material is always incomplete and fails to give answers to many 
questions we should like to ask. On the other hand, it is doubtful 
if a question list could be framed which would elicit absolutely full 
information. There would probably always remain some phases or 
some connections in the personal life of our respondents which our 
questions would not touch or elicit from him. Presumably the only 
method which would give an entirely trustworthy basis for conclu- 
sions would be something analogous to the psychoanalytic technique 
applied to an enormous number of cases. This is, for the present 
writer at least, out of the question. So this study must be taken in 
the light of this frank statement as to the difficulties and imperfec- 
tions of method. Whatever conclusions are reached will be ad- 
vanced only tentatively, subject to revision or rejection on further 
study by the present writer or by others. 



* For the Question List which I sent out see Appendix I., pp. 66-67 ; and 
for a discussion of the answers received, Appendix II., pp. 68-69. 



12 Communion With God 

III. WHAT ARE THE DISTINCTIVE MARKS OF THE 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF COMMUNION WITH GOD? 

In the paragraph immediately following the first of our typical 
cases, which was cited from James' Varieties of Religious Experi- 
ence, James remarks that "such hours of rapture are mystical ex- 
periences, of which in a later lecture I shall have much to say." In 
his later lectures he remarks: "One may say truly, I think, that 
personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical 
states of consciousness." 4 He then goes on to inquire "What does 
the expression 'mystical states of consciousness' mean? How do 
we part off mystical states from other states ?" His answer is that 
there are "four marks which, when an experience has them, may 
justify us in calling it mystical for the purpose of the present lec- 
tures." These marks are: Ineffability, Noetic Quality, Transiency, 
Passivity. 

What we have to do is to reach in a similar way a working de- 
scription or definition for the state of consciousness known as com- 
munion with God. We may immediately admit the truth of James' 
remark that this form of consciousness is mystical in its nature. 
This gives us the genus for our definition of the state under consid- 
eration. Our problem is to find the place of this state of conscious- 
ness in the larger class. James himself ranges the mystical states 
of consciousness in a series in this order: 1. "The deepened sense 
of the significance of a formula or maxim which occasionally 
sweeps over one. . . . This sense of deeper significance is not 
confined to rational propositions. Single words, and conjunctions 
of words, effects of light on land and sea, odors and musical sounds, 
all bring it when the mind is tuned aright." 2. The sudden feeling 
of having 'been here before,' as if at some indefinite past time, in 
just this place, with just these people, we were already saying just 
these things." 3. Dreamy states. 4. Trance-like states. 5. Mys- 
tical states produced by intoxicants and anesthetics. 6. "Sudden 
realization of the immediate presence of God." 7. Mystical moods 
awakened by certain aspects of nature, — "cosmic consciousness." 
He closes this range of the series with these words : "We have now 
seen enough of this cosmic or mystic consciousness, as it comes 
sporadically. We must next pass to its methodical cultivation as an 
element in the religious life." 

According to James, then, the sudden realization of the presence 
of God stands, with cosmic consciousness which often brings with 



4 James, op: cit., pp. 379 ff . 



Communion With God 13 

it a sense of God's presence, highest among those mystical states of 
cocnsciousness which come sporadically, not as a result of the sys- 
tematized practice of mysticism. With this conclusion I should 
agree after my own study of records of the experience of com- 
munion with God. The point of emphasis is the sporadic nature of 
the experience. It is a mystical state of consciousness, but it is not 
"mysticism." 

The consciousness of communion with God is the starting-point 
from which mysticism sets out; in a sense, it is also the goal to- 
wards which mysticism moves. That is to say, an experience of 
the sort which is accepted as communion with God is the thing 
from which mysticism sets out both on the speculative and on the 
practical sides : the speculation of mysticism, the mystical theology, 
attempts to rationalize the experience; the technique of mysticism 
attempts to reproduce it and to make it more or less a permanent 
possession. The formation of a technique shows that communion 
with. God is also the goal at which mysticism aims. Consciousness 
of communion with God is, then, the essential thing in mystical 
states of consciousness of the higher forms, but it is not the whole 
of them. It is to be noted also that full-blown mysticism somewhat 
alters and modifies the consciousness of communion with God from 
which it took its start, so that the communion with God which the 
mystical technique seeks and which mystics report that they have 
attained, is likely to be somewhat different in content and form 
from the original experience. We may make the distinction clear 
by noting that communion is different from union, and union is 
what is sought, and professedly attained, by the practice of the 
technique of mysticism. 

For the purpose of this study we shall therefore draw a line 
between the spontaneous and the acquired experiences of commu- 
nion with God, and confine our study to the former. What we have 
to investigate is the kind of experience which, presumably, might 
come to almost any person, and has indeed come to a great many 
who would never think of calling themselves mystics and who have 
never practiced the technique of mysticism. Mysticism as such has 
received abundant treatment at the hand of students, but this ele- 
mentary and rudimentary mystical state of consciousness has re- 
ceived only incidental treatment. 

With this important proviso, that the states which we are investi- 
gating are sporadic and spontaneous, we may accept James' four 
marks as distinguishing the state of consciousness denominated 
communion with God. The experience is ineffable. The content 



14 Communion With God 

cannot be communicated, at most the one who has the experience 
can describe the conditions and circumstances and to some extent 
his feelings. It also has noetic quality, in that almost invariably 
those who have had it speak of the new insight they have gained, of 
a deeper realization of reality. It is transient, although there are 
some who speak of a sense of God's companionship as an abiding 
experience. (Carey's words quoted above, p. 8, are illustrative.) 
It also is marked by a sense of passivity on the part of the one who 
has the experience, "as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed 
sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power." 

Coe 5 in his structural account of mysticism reproduces James' 
marks, with the exception of transiency which he does not mention, 
and adds certain others; viz., 1. sense perception of objects not 
physically present, as Christ, the Virgin, heaven, and hell. 2. Sys- 
tematized control (not mere isolated reflexes or associations), that 
seems not to be self-control, of muscles or of thought. 3. What 
James calls "noetic quality," and others call illumination. 4. Union 
with God so intimate that self-consciousness vanishes, the feeling 
tone said to be utterly satisfying. This is ecstasy. 5. What they 
have experienced is indescribable. 6. The systematic practice of 
mysticism contains certain common elements : withdrawal of atten- 
tion from common stimuli and concentration of attention upon 
some particular object. 7. Passivity, which, however, is a control 
that has to be secured by effort and practice, and which in a sense 
is intense activity. 8. Mystical doctrines of a certain generic type. 

It will be noted in this catalogue that Coe's seventh item, although 
he introduces it by saying "What James calls passivity," is in reality 
something very different from the passivity which James actually 
describes. In fact Coe's second item is practically what James calls 
passivity. 

Coe's first structural item, which he says in a later paragraph" 
falls under the head of hallucination, holds true of some of the 
cases of communion with God which I have investigated, but not of 
all. In fact, I should say that while the experience always gives 
those who have it a very vivid impression of God's presence, it is 
not an impression which is sensory in its nature. They speak of it 
in some such terms as these: 'It was so plain that I almost saw 
him" ; "It was as if I heard him speaking to me" ; "It seemed almost 
as if he touched me," etc. Obviously they use these expressions 
symbolically. In only a minority of cases that have come under my 



5 Psychology of Religion, pp. 268 ff. 
9 Coe, op. cit., p. 272. 



Communion With God 15 

consideration is there clear evidence of definite sense impressions 
of a hallucinatory nature. Sense perception, then, cannot be ac- 
counted a distinctive mark of the kind of consciousness which we 
are investigating. 

Coe's second item, which as we have just remarked is identical 
with what James calls passivity, has already been admitted as one 
of the marks of our state of consciousness. So, too, has his third 
item. 

Ecstasy, Coe's fourth item, apparently has for him a wider mean- 
ing than is ordinarily assigned to the term, for he continues : "Even 
the less extreme experiences are generally reported as bringing 
relief from the ills of ordinary existence." This is to make "ecstasy'' 
a term used loosely to describe the affective tone of the experience. 
If this is the sense in which the term is to be used, we may say that 
all the instances of communion with God which I have examined 
are ecstatic ; that is, they bring to those who experience them a hap- 
piness with which nothing else compares; they set at rest, for the 
time being at least, all doubts and anxieties; they obliterate all 
thought of "the ills of ordinary existence." But if ecstasy is used 
in the meaning which is ordinarily attached to the term, viz., that 
trance-like condition of utter absorption into the object of contem- 
plation, that "union with God so intimate that self-consciousness 
vanishes" (to use Coe's own words), then again ecstacy may be, but 
is not always, a mark of the state of consciousness we are consider- 
ing. Ecstasy in this narrower sense is found in two extremes of 
the religious life : in the trance states of violent types of nature 
religions, induced by religious dances or other rites which work 
hypnotically ; and at the climax of systematized mysticism, as in the 
case of Plotinus. In short, where it is not a pathological state allied 
to hysteria and catalepsy, it usually occurs only as a result of pro- 
longed and repeated efforts to attain it. Obviously, if one of the 
distinctive marks of the state we are studying is that it is sporadic 
and spontaneous, ecstasy is not likely to characterize it, and if it 
does occur there is at least a suspicion of pathological nervous con- 
ditions. Without exception, those who answered my questionnaires 
reported that they retained their ordinary consciousness. One re- 
ported that though ordinary consciousness remained, her conscious- 
ness was raised to the nth power." Ecstasy, whether the term is 
used in the sense assigned to it by the great mystics or in the sense 
in which it is used in medicine, does not form a necessary, or even 
a usual, mark of the consciousness of communion with God. 

Coe's fifth item corresponds to James' ineffability, and has already 



16 Communion With God 

been admitted as a mark. It is rare, however, to find any of the 
extreme consequences of bold paradoxes which Coe says follow 
from this ineffability. 

Systematized procedure in practice, Coe's sixth item, naturally 
does not hold of these sporadic and spontaneous states. More will 
be said later as to the conditions and circumstances which seem to 
prevail. For while the experience may be spontaneous as far as the 
subject's absence of any attempt to induce the experience is con- 
cerned, there may be laws for its occurrence which he has not ob- 
served. Neither can we trace any such group of mystical doctrines 
as Coe outlines under his eighth paint. What the experience does 
in a theological way is simply to give a living element of conviction 
to the usually rather loosely held doctrine of God. 

As regards Coe's seventh point, it again has to do with a mystical 
technique, and again does not hold of a spontaneous, non-system- 
atized type of experience. 

I have taken up these points somewhat in detail for the reason 
that when we say that the consciousness of communion with God 
is a mystical state of consciousness we need to make clear to our- 
selves in what ways and to what degree it is mystical. It will not do 
to regard the two things as synonymous. We may perhaps say that 
the whole of the class "consciousness of communion with God" falls 
within the class "mystical states of consciousness," but there is 
much in the latter class which does not belong to the former. 

Professor Irving King in his "Differentiation of the Religious 
Consciousness" 7 maintains that "religion is a specialization out of a 
primitive and relatively undifferentiated consciousness." The phrase 
may help us to realize the nature of the kind of consciousness we 
are considering. Communion zuith God is the undifferentiated con- 
sciousness out of which the specific forms of the mystical conscious- 
ness arise and are differentiated. In the development of the reli- 
gious consciousness out of the primitive and undifferentiated con- 
sciousness the rites and ceremonies of religions play the part that 
in the development of the mystic consciousness is played by the 
technique, the systematized practice of mysticism. So too the devel- 
oped, and developing, mystical theology plays a part analagous to 
mythology and theological systems. 

To sum up: The consciousness of communion with God is a 
form of consciousness of the mystical type. It is characterized by 
the marks of mystical states of consciousness as given by James : 
Ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, and passivity. It is differ- 

* Pp. 4-9. 



Communion With God 17 

entiated within the class by the fact that it is a state of consciousness 
which the person who has it makes no deliberate attempt to induce — 
it comes to the person without the aid of a mystical technique. It 
may or may not, more often does not, involve sensory hallucination. 
Its affective tone is one of great pleasure, the obliteration for the 
time being of consciousness of the tilings which bring unhappiness, 
doubt, anxiety, or at least an assurance that after all they will work 
for good. It is not likely to be characterized by ecstasy of any ex- 
treme form. Neither is it marked by any of the distinctive marks 
of the mysticism which has developed a system and a technique, 
whether in practice or in doctrine. It is, in short, the vague, undif- 
ferentiated mystical experience out of which the experiences of the 
great mystics have been developed by their various methods of put- 
ting themselves in the way of attaining such experiences. 

A word is perhaps necessary in closing this section in justification 
of the statement just made. According to mystical theology, all 
mystical experiences are spontaneous, no matter what the nature or 
extent of ascetic preparation. The mystic may make whatever 
effort he pleases, but the mystical experience is not thereby ensured. 
The experience comes, when it comes, as a free gift. Poulain, for 
instance, 8 defines the subject matter of mystical theology in sub- 
stantially these words (I quote from memory) : "Mystic denotes 
those supernatural acts or states which we cannot produce of our 
own accord, in the slightest degree or even momentarily." Plotinus' 
words may also be recalled about the poor beggar lying outside the 
house of the great king, waiting if perchance a fragment from the 
rich feast may be thrown to him, but not daring to make any claim 
for it. This would tend to break down any such distinction as we 
have attempted to make between sporadic and spontaneous cases on 
the one side and the more elaborate and differentiated mystical ex- 
periences on the other side. And doubtless it is true that to the 
great mystics their greatest ecstasies have seemed as spontaneous I 
as the vague mystical experiences which we are investigating. Yet 
a psychologist cannot escape the conclusion that the very attempt to 
secure such experiences, the desire for them, may aid in inducing 
them. The studies in the psychology of conversion made by Star- 
buck and Coe have demonstrated this conclusively. Wherever a 
certain technique is practiced, whether among medicine men, or 
among Brahmans and Buddhists, or among Neo-Platonists, or 
Sufis, or among Christian mystics, there we find mystical experi- 
ences answering to the ascetic and mystical practices. It would 



8 The Graces of Interior Prayer, p. 1. 



18 Communion With God 

perhaps be impossible to point out the exact combination of condi- 
tions which brings the mystical experience after perhaps a hundred 
failures to attain it, but it is hard not to believe that there is such a 
combination. It is possible to accept the hypothesis that there is a 
psychological explanation for the experiences of those whom we 
might perhaps call professional mystics. It remains to be seen 
whether we can offer an explanation complete and satisfying for 
these sporadic experiences, — which, it may be repeated, were the 
starting-point for the mystics themselves, the occasion for the de- 
velopment of a technique for their recovery and revival. It may be 
that even these spontaneous cases will prove to be subject to clearly 
denned psychological laws. All we are interested in proving at 
present is that there are such experiences, and that there is at least 
a difference in degree if not in kind between them and the experi- 
ences of the pronounced mystics. Our problem is not to define and 
explain mysticism, but to define and if possible explain the primi- 
tive and fundamental mystical state of consciousness. 



After working out the above-given structural account of the ex- 
periences in question for myself on the basis of the cases I had 
studied, I read the account given by Pratt which in many respects 
is similar to mine. He says : 9 

"The milder and calmer type of religious experiece . . . 
often arises spontaneously, and independently of social pres- 
sure or even imitation. It wells up from the deeper and more 
instinctive regions of one's nature. It is not gained by conta- 
gion or association with others, but one suddenly finds it; a 
new feeling of communion with a greater life fills the mind 
and colors the entire field of consciousness. It may begin in 
early childhood or even late in life, but as a rule it first mani- 
fests itself either in the beginning or at the end of adolescence. 
Whenever it comes, however, it largely dominates the life, and 
it almost always comes to stay. It is not a transitory burst of 
emotion flaring up with fever heat and dying out as suddenly 
as it was kindled, but a calm, quiet, lasting source of genial, 
vital warmth, which lights up the whole life and, though often 
smouldering, is seldom completely extinguished. . . . 

"The case of one of my respondents is so instructive that I 
give it at some length. 'I think I was just thirteen when one 
night for a moment there came a feeling of great peace or rest. 



9 Psychology of Religions Belief, pp. 222-227 (italics mine). 



Communion With God 19 

I almost held my breath, hoping to keep it, but it was gone, 
and left me only the memory, which became an ideal for whose 
realization I began to hope and work. I called it peace, for the 
verse in Isaiah 26:3 seemed to describe the experience better 
than any other. I have found some old notes of that year with 
the verse copied, and think that it perhaps marked the begin- 
ning of my search. ... It may be that it was Miss Haver- 
gal's word about "the permanence of the joy of the Lord" 
that gave me the assurance that such a feeling of peace ought 
to be constant instead of coming in flashes. It came to me 
only in that last way at first and I could not find a cause that 
would always produce them, and yet I remember feeling that 
they must be governed by some law, and if I could only find 
that law, I could reproduce them at will. . . . One day I 
found in an old commentary a description of my experience, 
and it gave me as its cause absolute obedience to God. I had 
already felt that study of His word and prayer had a great deal 
to do with the coming of the peace. . . . Gradually, by 
spending some time alone each day, the experience became 
longer and perhaps less intense. They were best expressed by 
the word peace, and I began to know that I might always have 
the feeling if I would instantly do the right as I saw it and 
would save time for quiet study. I found that when actual 
necessity interfered with that, the peace would not go ; but 
carelessness would always drive it away.' 

"Everyone will note the marked similarity between this and 
the descriptions given by a number of the Christian mystics. 
The experience comes at first unsought and in a sudden flash. 
This is interpreted in accordance with the religious ideas 
already held, and is thereafter deliberately sought. Methods 
for regaining the experience are found in records of the ex- 
perience of others — in this case an old commentary, in the case 
of many of the mystics the description of the orison of some 
previous mystic. The state is systematically cultivated. . . . 

"All the sources to which I have access agree that this milder 
type of religious experience is at first spontaneous, but is there- 
after very susceptible to cultivation." 

This quotation from Professor Pratt makes clear my central con- 
tention in this chapter, viz., that there is a spontaneous, undifferen- 
tiated mystical state of consciousness. It is this state which we are 
studying, and not the systematized mystical experiences. 



20 Communion With God 

IV. CAN THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF COMMUNION 
WITH GOD BE DISTINGUISHED FROM 
CERTAIN RELATED TYPES 
OF CONSCIOUSNESS? 

There are two other states of consciousness which more or less 
closely resemble the state which we are investigating. These are 
aesthetic consciousness and what has been termed "cosmic conscious- 
ness." Both of these may occur spontaneously, both may give the 
sense of illumination and insight into the meaning of things which 
transcends verbal expression, both have James' notes of transiency 
and passivity, both have the utterly satisfying affective tone which 
we have found characteristic of the consciousness of communion 
with God. The question as to whether it is possible to discriminate 
between communion with God and these kindred states has at least 
religious interest and may have psychological interest. 

Again it will be well to cite some concrete cases. The term 
"cosmic consciousness" is, I believe, due to Dr. Richard Maurice 
Bucke, and I quote his account of his experience : 10 

"It was in the early spring, at the beginning of his thirty- 
sixth year. He and two friends had spent the evening reading 
Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whit- 
man. They parted at midnight, and he had a long drive in a 
hansom (it was in an English city). His mind, deeply under 
the influence of the ideas, images and emotions called up by 
the reading and talk of the evening, was calm and peaceful. 
He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at 
once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped 
around as it were by a flame-colored cloud. For an instant 
he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city ; 
the next he knew that the light was within himself. Directly 
afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense 
joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intel- 
lectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his 
brain streamed one momentary lightning-flash of Brahmic 
Splendor which has ever since lightened his life; upon his 
heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thenceforward 
for always an after taste of heaven. Among other things he 
did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is 
not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is 
immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that with- 



10 Cosmic Consciousness, edition of 1905, pp. 6-7. 



Communion With God 21 

out any peradventure all things work together for the good of 
each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is 
what we call love and that the happiness of everyone is in the 
long run absolutely certain. He claims that he learned more 
within the few seconds during which the illumination lasted 
than in previous months or even years of study, and that no 
study could ever have taught." 

Dr. Bucke later on summarizes the marks of the person who has 
attained cosmic consciousness as follows : 

' . . . the marks of the Cosmic Sense . . . are : 

a. The subjective light. 

b. The moral elevation. 

c. The intellectual illumination. 

d. The sense of immortality. 

e. The loss of the fear of death. 

f. The loss of the sense of sin. 

g. The suddenness, instantaneousness of the awakening. 

h. The previous character of the man — intellectual, moral and 

physical. (All well developed.) 
i. The age of illumination. (According to Dr. Bucke usually 

somewhere in the thirties.) 
j . The added charm to the personality so that men and women 

are always (?) strongly attracted to the person, 
k. The transfiguration of the subject of the change as seen by 

others when the cosmic sense is actually present." 11 

This somewhat miscellaneous list of characteristics of cosmic 
consciousness will not aid us materially in discriminating between 
our type of consciousness and that which Dr. Bucke has in mind. 
Discrimination becomes still more difficult when one examines Dr. 
Bucke's list of cases, which includes Jesus, Paul, St. John of the 
Cross, and Behmen among his primary cases, and among the sup- 
plemental cases Moses, Isaiah, Pascal, and Finney. 

As I understand Dr. Bucke's position, what he has in mind is 
some sort of experience which convinces those who have had it 
that the universe is spiritual in its nature, that man shares in this 
spirituality, and consequently can neither sin nor die, and that be- 
cause of the spiritual nature of the universe its operations are alto- 
gether and solely beneficent. It is, roughly speaking, a pantheistic 
conception which becomes a living power to those who have had 
the experience. There is in it no sense of communion with a per- 

11 Bucke, op. cit., pp. 65-66. Fuller statement, pp. 60-63. 



22 Communion With God 

sonal God, for there is no such being. This conies out, not so much 
in what Dr. Bucke says about his experience or in his list of the 
characteristics of the experience in general, but in his interpreta- 
tion of the words used by various persons whom he includes in his 
list, in which he often resorts to something analogous to the old- 
style allegorical interpretation of scripture. Whatever is anthropo- 
morphic, or even personal, is interpreted by him symbolically as a 
veiled allusion to his "cosmic" impersonal spiritual reality. 

If my interpretation of Dr. Bucke is correct, then the chief dif- 
ference between consciousness of communion with God and cosmic 
consciousness is a difference in the content of that which is experi- 
enced. There are no clear differences in the psychological processes 
involved, but there is a difference in the conception of what it is 
that one has come into contact with. The overwhelming mass of 
men who have had this primitive mystical experience say that they 
have found a God who is a person, and among them are some whom 
Dr. Bucke gives in his list; over against them is a small group of 
persons who have had an experience which is psychologically indis- 
tinguishable from that of the larger group, and they say that what 
they have come into contact with is a spiritual but impersonal world- 
order. 

Obviously, in the last analysis, the difference between the two 
types of experience reduces itself to a matter of the interpretation 
which is put upon the experience by those who have it. The inter- 
pretation put upon the experience will be pretty largely determined 
by the general religious and philosophical attitude of the individual. 
Since man is almost incurably anthropomorphic in his conception of 
deity, if he has a mystical experience he will in perhaps nine cases 
out of ten say that he has been in communion with a personal God ; 
but if he has in some way come to conceive of things in an imper- 
sonal way, he will interpret his mystical experience as communion 
with a spiritual and beneficent, but impersonal, world order. It is 
worthy of note that according to Dr. Bucke's own record he had 
spent hous just before his experience in reading and discussing 
poets in all of whom the pantheistic thought is more or less clearly 
expressed. What more natural than that he should have interpreted 
his experience in the light of the ideas then in his mind? If he had 
been reading and discussing the Bible, the experience would have 
been interpreted by him in personal terms. It would be instructive 
to compare with Dr. Bucke's experience the experience, interpreted 
in a personal way, which Browning ascribes to the speaker in his 
"Christmas Eve," too long to quote, but with many features similar 



Communion With God 23 

to Dr. Bucke's experience. (To be sure, Browning's description is 
contained in a work of fiction, but some experience, whether the 
poet's own or some that he had heard or read, must lie at the base 
of it, however it may have been altered and adorned for the pur- 
poses of his poem.) 

One minor point may be noted before turning from this discus- 
sion. Dr. Bucke lays much stress upon the subjective light as char- 
acteristic of cosmic consciousness, putting it first in the list of his 
characteristics (perhaps because this was what first occurred in his 
own experience) and seeking evidence for it in all the cases which 
he cites. If one were to stick at this, here would be a mark which 
does not necessarily, and I believe not even usually, characterize the 
consciousness of communion with God. It does appear, it is true, 
in a good many of the cases of sudden conversion, of which Finney's 
case is a classic instance. It is the phenomenon known in psychol- 
ogy as photism. In very few of the cases I have studied, outside 
of those in which the sense of communion with God came in con- 
nection with a conversion experience, is there mention of photisms. 

It is somewhat more difficult to find clear cases of aesthetic con- 
sciousness clearly enough described to be able to use them for 
comparative purposes. The most striking one which has come to 
my knowledge is that reported in Twenty Minutes of Reality. 12 The 
writer tells of her fear as a child of world without end and life 
everlasting, then of undergoing an operation, in which while under 
the influence of the anaesthetic she had discovered that there was 
no God, or if there was one that He was indifferent to all human 
suffering. Several days later she was wheeled out on the porch of 
the hospital for the first time since the operation, on a cloudy, 
windy March day. She continues : 

"I cannot now recall whether the revelation came suddenly 
or gradually ; I only remember finding myself in the very 
midst of those wonderful moments, beholding life for the first 
time in all its young intoxication of loveliness, in its unspeak- 
able joy, beauty, and importance. I cannot say exactly what 
the mysterious change was. I saw no new thing, but I saw all 
the usual things in a miraculous new light — in what I believe 
is their true light. I saw for the first time how wildly beautiful 
and joyous beyond any words of mine to describe, is the whole 
of life. Every human being moving across that porch, every 
sparrow that flew, every branch tossing in the wind, was caught 



12 Montagu, Twenty Minutes of Reality, pp. 8-11 



24 Communion With God 

in and was a part of the whole mad ecstasy of loveliness, of 
joy, of importance, of intoxication of love. 

"It was not that for a few keyed-up moments I imagined all 
existence as beautiful, but that my inner vision was cleared to 
the truth so that I saw the actual loveliness which is always 
there, but which we so rarely perceive ; and I knew that every 
man, woman, bird, and tree, every living thing before me, was 
extravagantly beautiful, and extravagantly important. And, 
as I beheld, my heart melted out of me in a rapture of love 
and delight. A nurse was walking past; the wind caught a 
strand of her hair and blew it out in a momentary gleam of 
sunshine, and never in my life before had I seen how beautiful 
beyond all belief is a woman's hair. Nor had I ever guessed 
how marvellous it is for a human being to walk. As for the 
internes in their white suits, I had never realized before the 
whiteness of white linen ; but much more than that, I had 
never so much as dreamed of the mad beauty of young man- 
hood. A little sparrow chirped and flew to a nearby branch, 
and I honestly believe that only 'the morning stars singing to- 
gether, and the sons of God shouting for joy' can in the least 
express the ecstasy of a bird's flight. I cannot express it, but 
I have seen it. . . . 

"Besides all the joy and beauty and that curious sense of 
the importance, there was a wonderful feeling of rhythm as 
well, only it was somehow just beyond the grasp of my mind. 
I heard no music, yet there was an exquisite sense of time, as 
though all life went by to a vast, unseen melody. Everything 
that moved wove out a little thread of rhythm in this tremen- 
dous whole. When a bird flew, it did so because somewhere a 
note had been struck for it to fly on ; or else its flying struck 
the note; or else again the great Will that is Melody willed 
that it should fly. When people walked, somewhere they beat 
out a bit of rhythm that was in harmony with the whole great 
theme." 

Only one other instance of aesthetic consciousness need be cited, 
and again we turn to Browning : 

"Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe: 
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear ; 

The rest may reason and welcome : 'tis we musicians know." 13 



13 Browning, Abt Vogler, stanza xi. 



Communion With God 25 

Music is of all the arts the one which is most potent to bring a 
sort of mystic consciousness, a sense of the meaning and signifi- 
cance of the whole of things, a surcease from anxiety, a feeling 
of being in contact with reality. But all the arts can bring it to a 
greater or less degree. Moreover, as the Twenty Minutes of Reality 
shows, a form of consciousness which is apparently a blending of 
aesthetic and religious emotions may come in the same spontaneous 
way as the consciousness of communion with God, and may have 
many of the same characteristics and the same effects upon the per- 
son who experiences it. 

Again, as in the case of cosmic consciousness, no hard and fast 
line can be drawn between such aesthetic experiences and com- 
munion with God. Psychologically the two are practically indis- 
tinguishable. Pratt's words may be quoted in this connection: "In 
such a case it is, of course, the belief that one happens to hold which 
turns what would otherwise be merely aesthetic pleasure into what 
is interpreted as a religious experience. It must be noted, how- 
ever, that the emotion as actually felt is a religious one and is de- 
cidedly different from mere aesthetic delight in nature." 14 

To put the matter briefly, neither cosmic consciousness nor aes- 
thetic consciousness is to be distinguished with absolute certainty 
from the consciousness of communion with God except for the one 
fact that it seems one or the other to the person who experiences 
it. One qualification to this statement is necessary, viz. : that the 
mediation of physical stimuli is clearly demonstrable in the case 
of mystic consciousness of the aesthetic type — the picture or statue, 
the bit of landscape, the sounds of the singer's voice or the musical 
instrument, these are necessary to produce this particular type of 
mystic consciousness. Some at least of the definitely religious ex- 
periences seem to arise, at least so far as the consciousness of the 
subject is concerned, wholly without such external stimuli. Some 
of those who feel that they have been in communion with God, as 
they look back can tell us that nature or music or something of the 
kind was the occasion for the experience — which nevertheless they 
interpret as a religious experience, — but others can point to no such 
thing; for them it was, so far as they could see, something abso- 
lutely disconnected with such external stimuli. The psychologist 
may suspect, of course, that there may have been external stimuli 
which the subjects overlooked, but he has no means of proving his 
theory. 



14 Pratt, op. cit, p. 248. 



26 Communion With God 

It may be pointed out in closing this section that to say that 
psychologically there is little if any difference in these three types 
of mystical experience is equivalent merely to saying that a man 
sees only what he is prepared to see, which is true also of sense 
experience and the consciousness which goes along with it. The 
South Sea Islanders who first saw horses called them pigs. Each 
man names his experiences in accordance with what is already in his 
mind. In the minds of most men the supreme reality is a personal 
God (or gods), and when they come into contact with what seems 
to them supreme reality they will say they have been in communion 
with God. For others, the supreme reality is an impersonal but 
spiritual universe, and they will say if they come into contact with it 
that that is what they have experienced. 



V. THE CONDITIONS AND CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER 
WHICH THE EXPERIENCE IS HAD. 

The next question which we have set for our consideration is 
this : What are the conditions and circumstances under which 
such experiences are had? Can we trace any laws as to the atten- 
dant conditions and circumstances? I may as well say at once that 
the conditions, in so far as they are reported, are so extremely 
varied that I have been utterly unable to trace any laws. 

Several of the questions in my list were asked with the pur- 
pose of ascertaining the conditions and circumstances, and I have 
tried to subject literary cases to the same questions — not always 
with success, for they are often reported only fragmentarily. One 
question, for instance, is as to the religious body with which the per- 
son who has had the experience is connected. It would be interesting 
to know if there is any religious body in which such experiences are 
especially common. If there was, it would suggest at least that 
there is something in the belief and practice of that body, some- 
thing in the spirit of the life which it inculcates and fosters, some- 
thing in the atmosphere of expectation within the group, which 
would tend to induce such experiences. But the evidence is far 
from conclusive. In fact, so varied and diverse are the religious 
communities within which the experience is reported, that I am 
inclined to believe that if we had records of the personal religious 
experiences of believers in all the forms which religion has as- 
sumed among men, there would be few, if any, of them in which 
we should not find experiences which were interpreted by those 
who had them as communion with the divine. The various articles 



Communion With God 27 

on "Communion with Diety" in Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion 
and Ethics, although they cover a wider field than that of the 
present investigation, would go far towards substantiating the state- 
ment I have just made. It is my opinion that the influence of ex- 
periences of this kind in originating religion has often been under- 
estimated by scholars who have treated of the obscure question as 
to the origin of religion, especially by those who approach the sub- 
ject almost exclusively from the sociological and anthropological 
point of view. Records of experiences from Christians of every 
description, from Jews, Mohammedans, Hindus, Gnostics, Greeks, 
Romans, from men still on the stage of nature religion, — from all 
these, records might be cited. The experience is confined to no one 
religion. 

If I should hazard an opinion, which I cannot, however, sub- 
stantiate by statistics, I should say that among Christians the body 
which in proportion to its numbers has the most numerous records 
of experiences of communion with God is the Society of Friends. 
If this is true, it would tend to substantiate what was said a moment 
ago, that there is something in the belief and practice of the body, 
something in the spirit of the life which it inculcates and fosters, 
which tends to induce the consciousness of communion with God. 
And surely this is not difficult to prove in the case of the Quakers. 
Their fundamental doctrine is that of the Inner Light, the belief 
in God's personal guidance and direction of the believer's life. To 
be sure, the experience of the Quaker stands on the border-line 
between the spontaneous mystical experiences with which we are 
especially concerned and the experiences which are sought by a 
deliberate and systematized technique. Any one who has ever at- 
tended a Quaker meeting will know how powerful an incentive it 
gives to mystical experiences in susceptible natures ; and doubtless 
the influence of the meeting works on in many of the experiences 
had by devout Quakers in solitude. And yet, even with all these 
deductions made, there are still numerous cases reported in Quaker 
autobiographies which fall into the class we are investigating. 

Another question I asked was whether there was something in 
the circumstances which might have aided in inducing the exper- 
ience; for instance, a crisis in the subject's life, or a state of perplex- 
ity, doubt, and feeling of the need of guidance. This does hold true in 
a large number of cases. The fourth of the typical cases cited at 
the beginning of this study will illustrate this. .Some of Pratt's 
respondents tell of having the consciousness of communion with 
God as they watched by the bedside of children or husband at the 



28 Communion With God 

point of death. 15 Some have it when they are facing important 
decisions and recognize that the answer given means the determina- 
tion of the future course of life. To some God is then very real, 
and the answer given seems to them more or less clearly indicated 
to them by God. To some it comes at the moment of supreme dedi- 
cation of themselves to some cause or course of action. The decision 
has been made, perhaps at effort, and then comes the sudden reali- 
zation of God's presence, not felt during the efforts to decide, as 
if in recognition and confirmation of the choice made and the self- 
giving to the task or duty. It may come at a time of spiritual ex- 
altation, as (I believe we may say) to Jesus at the time of his bap- 
tism. But it may equally come at a time of spiritual depression, as 
to Jesus in Gethsemane. 

It is well to note in this connection that it would be hasty and 
ill-advised to build a theory of causation on the fact that the ex- 
perience frequently does come in such times of crisis, of doubt, of 
self-dedication, and the like. Frequently those who have had the 
experience find their lives changed by it, and looking back they 
count that a critical time in their lives ; and yet before the experience 
came, and during it, they were not conscious of being at a crisis. In 
fact, the answer of one of my respondents seems to characterize 
quite a good many who have had the experience in question : "No," 
she writes in answer to the question whether there was anything in 
the circumstances which might have aided in inducing the exper- 
iences; "on the other hand the experiences led to my making re- 
ligion the center of my life" — and goes on to say that the experiences 
had come to her even at times when she considered herself an 
agnostic. In fact, practically all my respondents say that as far as 
they know there was nothing in the circumstances to aid in inducing 
the experience. It may be added that a few, but not all by any 
means, of those of my respondents who have had the experience and 
who belong to religious bodies in which revivals are common report 
having the consciousness of communion with God in connection 
with a revival. 

In a study which I once made of conversion I found that in a 
good many cases of sudden conversion there was at the centre or 
turning-point of the experience a consciousness of the divine pres- 
ence, of divine help or assurance. Nearly all of the cases of con- 
version which James reports at length have this characteristic. 18 



15 Pratt, op. cit., pp. 249-250. 

16 James, op. cit., Lectures IX-X, Conversion. Note especially the cases of 
Alline, Brainerd, Bradley, Finney, the Oxford Graduate, and Ratisbonne. 



Communion With God 29 

But there are many conversions in which there is no mention of 
this characteristic. The conversion experience is no guarantee of 
the consciousness of communion with God. 

Those who have had the experience more than once have not 
been able to indicate anything in the circumstances which regularly 
precedes the experience. The same may be said of my study of the 
circumstances preceding the more isolated cases. There is no one 
thing that acts as a cue for the appearance of the consciousness of 
God. If there is one thing which is more frequent than others 
among the circumstances named, it is being out-of-doors in the 
presence of some beautiful or majestic aspect of nature, sometimes 
of a terrifying aspect. Several of Pratt's respondents speak of 
this. One of my respondents sketches the circumstances of one 
of her experiences thus : "In a boat on a lake — twilight — thrushes 
singing — quiet — sudden sense of God present." Another: "I was 
walking alone in the mountains in the early morning, the rays of 
the just risen sun shining golden through the leaves. A thrush sang 
in the deep valley below me. Of a sudden I felt, 'God is here,' and 
bared my head and prayed." Again and again such descriptions 
recur. It must have been something of the kind which led the 
Greeks to believe in their great god Pan — a sudden overpowering 
sense of the beauty and mystery of nature, a feeling of the whole 
being that a living presence was there. This is perhaps the com- 
monest type of the mystical experience. 

But again no rash and hasty theory must be built on these in- 
stances. Nature may be entirely shut out, and still the experience 
may come. For instance, the same respondent who wrote of find- 
ing God while in a boat on the lake in twilight wrote of finding 
Him also at church during the celebration of High Mass according 
to the Anglican rite : "From the Sanctus to the Gloria. A rushing 
musical sound of wings — a certainty of the presence of the Holy 
Spirit of God. The music of the Benedictus — the prayer of con- 
secration not consciously heard." No one external stimulus can be 
pointed to as always preceding the consciousness of communion 
with God. 

The same is true when we come to consider the condition of the 
person. If the physical condition be in question, people have been 
conscious of God in health and in sickness and in convalescence. It 
may be significant that very frequently those who are at the point 
of death seem to be conscious of the divine. The clergy who watch 
by the dying have often noted just before the end a sudden bright- 
ening of the dying person's face and have caught words expressing 



30 Communion With God 

the sense of divine presence. But just as often, perhaps, is the ex- 
perience in the full vigor of health, with every power and faculty 
functioning at its best. Pratt says : 17 "It is a thoroughly normal 
phenomenon, and the condition most favorable for it is health, 
both mental and physical." 

The same diversity may be found in the mental condition of those 
who have the experience as in the physical condition. There may 
be great emotional tension preceding the experience, or there may be 
calm and quiet. Sadness or joy may equally be the mood in which 
the consciousness comes. There may be intense activity of thought, 
or the mind may have been just before almost vacant of thought. 
The will may be strained, or the person may be in a passive atti- 
tude. The thought of God may be present to the mind, as in prayer, 
or God may not have been in the person's mind until of a sudden 
He was known by the person to be present. 

So this section of our inquiry reaches a negative conclusion. 
There is no law in the attendant or preceding circumstances and 
conditions except the law of diversity. In solitude and in com- 
pany, under great emotional tension and in entire calm, in weak- 
ness and strength, disease and health, in times of sadness and in 
times of joy, in-doors and out-of-doors, in childhood, youth, and 
maturity, at the hour of death, with previous religious training and 
without, — in all these circumstances and under all these conditions 
the experience has been reported. This needs to be carefully 
borne in mind when we come to consider the question as to the 
explanation to be given for the experience. We shall need to seek 
a cause which can be operative in such a diversity of conditions. 

VI. THE EFFECTS AND FUNCTION OF THE EX- 
PERIENCE. 

The next question for our consideration is this : What are the 
effects of the experience of communion with God? It is in a way 
an attempt to look at the experience from a behaviorist point of 
view. It must be admitted at the outset, however, that our data 
are extremely meagre on this point. 

As far as the physical! concomitants or effects of the experience 
are concerned, there is an almost complete lack of information. My 
respondents gave nothing which could be used in studying this as- 
pect of the question ; and it is the rarest of things mentioned in the 
accounts which I have found in print. Few persons have the power 



17 Op. cit., p. 230. 



Communion With God 31 

to tell how a great emotional experience affects them physically. 
They do not notice the physical side of the experience at the time, 
and they are unable to recall it in retrospect. It is an experience 
which usually occurs in solitude, and even when it occurs in the 
company of other persons those who are about would scarcely be 
able, even if trained observers, to note the physical effects upon 
the person who was having the experience. 

The most marked physiological effects are the interruption of 
the normal rhythms of respiration and pulse. There is a feeling 
of contraction of the chest, the heart seems to stand still, and then 
with a sudden rebound greatly accelerates its beat. Respiration at 
the same time is greatly diminished, seems sometimes almost to 
cease. Added to these there is the sensation of something rising up 
within one Often tears accompany or follow. There is with many 
a feeling of great physical relaxation, a temporary lack of power 
of co-ordination of muscular movements. The man cited in our 
first typical case was unable to stand and had to sit on a stone. 

With my results may be compared those of Pratt : 18 "One of my 
questions was: 'How does it' (the 'communion' experience) affect 
you physically?" This was simply ignored by the majority, while 
many of the others insisted that there was no physical effect what- 
ever. The chief reason for these answers is, of course, lack of 
introspective power; though there seems to be at least one other, 
namely, that hinted at in the somewhat naive expression : 'When I 
try to describe such an experience in words, the terms are terms 
of sensation and they should not be.' ... I have two definite 
answers which will help to show us, in the case of two individuals 
at least, how God feels. 'When I experience the presence of God 
I feel, physically, aggressive but self-poised, exhilarated 
but not impulsive, my chest swells, my breathing is deep and satis- 
fying, and I seem to see the way to action opened up and the strength 
to do it.' 'With me the physical effects begin usually with a quiver- 
ing and upheaving of the diaphragm which starts a wave of sensation 
upward through the chest region and into the pharynx, and results 
in incipient yawning. This in turn is followed by an incitement of 
the lachrymnal glands and tears sometimes fill my eyes. All these 
physical sensations, considered merely as such, are mildly pleasing. 
After they are over comes a sense of great refreshment." 

I secured no answer as definite as these and have nothing to add 
But it is to be noted that such statements as have just been made, 
whether by myself or quoted, go but a little way towards clear dis- 



i 8 Op. cit., pp. 253-254. 



32 Communion With God 

crimination of the experience in question. As far as I can see, 
there is nothing unique or distinctive in these physical effects. They 
are pretty largely the common manifestations of all great emo- 
tional and affective experiences. 

Pratt says that his respondents answered his question as to men- 
tal effects much more fully and precisely. I can report the same 
thing. One respondent writes, "I didn't notice any except perhaps 
a bit more energy of a dynamic quality." Another: "Effect was 
positive. Effects powerfully the will." Nearly all were content 
to answer in the words that I meant to be merely suggestive rather 
than fully descriptive, that the effect of the experience was one of 
exaltation, courage, confidence, certainty, and the like. Almost all 
who have had the experience testify that it gives increased power, 
bodily and mental, that the will is steadied to do or to endure, that 
uncertainty as to one's course vanishes. There is usually no sense 
of excitement, rather of unusual calm, the calm of complete posses- 
sion of all one's powers, which are known to be adequate to any 
test about to be imposed upon them, and complete certainty as to 
the successful outcome. 

This compact statement as to the mental effects of the experience 
may be taken as indicative of its function. A good deal has been 
said of late years about the biological value or necessity of religion, 
the function of religion for the human organism. There is a pretty 
general agreement that religion's function for the organism is that of 
aiding it in its struggle by giving just these powerful incentives of 
courage, confidence, certainty. The organism which lacks these 
qualities is at a disadvantage, the organism which has them is the 
one which succeeds in maintaining and perpetuating itself. It is 
not that religion alone gives these qualities, or that there is a clear 
line of distinction between those who are religious and those who 
are not; but our concern at this moment is not with this broader 
aspect of the matter, but with the effect it has for the individual. 
The religious individual may not arise above the level of certain 
non-religious individuals, but he feels perfectly sure that through 
his religion he rises to a higher level than would be possible for him 
without it. 

All this is generally admitted truth regarding the function of re- 
ligion in general. Now, the experience of communion with God 
is, from one point of view at least, the heart of religion. It would 
follow a priori that whatever function religion in general might have 
for men this experience would have also. This a priori expectation is 
abundantly confirmed by a study of the testimony of those who 



Communion With God 33 

have had the experience of communion with God. One respondent 
writes in answer to the question, What value do you attach to the 
experience? "It offers a practical solution to my daily problems 
and difficulties." Another, "Through it I have learned somewhat 
of the practice of the presence of God. This constant life with God 
is my religion." Almost without exception they agree that the ex- 
perience strengthens their belief in God and their confidence in 
Him ; and since living conviction as to God is the heart of religion, 
in all its higher forms at least, that means that this experience is 
the chief element in securing for many whatever values religion has 
for men. 

There are two things which keep religion alive from generation 
to generation : religious institutions and mystical experiences. It 
is difficult to estimate, either in general, or in particular cases, the 
relative strength of these two factors. Religious institutions, es- 
pecially sectarian bodies, have often been founded upon or about 
mystical experiences ; without the experiences the institution would 
not have been formed, yet it includes, necessarily, much more than 
the mystical experience, and it has not been able to guarantee the 
continuance of the experiences. Most of those who have had mys- 
tical experience belong to religious bodies and value them and the 
other institutions of religion to which them are used. Yet nearly 
all of them agree in saying that the element in religion of greatest 
value to them is the personal communion with God. In fact it seems 
unlikely that religious institutions would continue indefinitely to 
retain their hold upon men unless along with them went personal 
experiences more or less mystical in their nature. It is noteworthy 
that there is an intimate connection between the prophetic and the 
mystical elements in religions. Many of the great prophets in re- 
ligion have given us accounts of their mystical experiences, and the 
presumption is that those prophets who have left no such records 
have had similar experiences. It was their consciousness of com- 
munion with God that made them prophets and that gave them their 
authority with the people. Now it is notorious that it is prophetism 
which from time to time revives religion and gives it fresh hold 
upon men. So, both from the social and from the individual point 
of view, this form of consciousness is of the highest value and per- 
forms in an intensive way those functions which religion in general 
performs. 



34 Communion With God 

VII. WHAT EXPLANATION IS TO BE GIVEN FOR 
THE EXPERIENCE? 

The answer to the question, What explanation is to be given for 
this spontaneous experience of consciousness of communion with 
with God? is the most difficult part of our task. Bear in mind that 
no one, so far as I know, has treated specifically of this problem. 
We shall have to examine the explanations that have been given 
for related conscious experiences and see what light they may 
throw upon our particular problem and what modifications may 
have to be made in order to fit the facts in our cases. 

Many attempts have been made to explain mysticism, and to 
these we shall turn for hints at explanation of our type of con- 
sciousness. It is obvious, however, that much of what might be 
said in way of explanation of mystical experiences in general may 
not hold good of these experiences in particular. We have said 
that these experiences have as their characteristic mark within 
the general class of mystical experiences that they are spontaneous, 
whereas those of mysticism proper are at least deliberately sought. 
An experience which is deliberately sought may be very different 
from one which comes unsought and unexpectedly, and the fact 
that it is sought must be kept in mind in any attempt at explanation. 
In fact some explain mystic experiences almost exclusively from 
this point of view — they are the result, we are told, of ascetic prac- 
tices, of a deliberate narrowing of attention which produces auto- 
hypnosis and hallucination. 19 It is evident that we cannot accept 
such explanation, at least not in toto, as applicable to the experiences 
we are studying. It is true, of course, that, on the one hand, the 
seeking for the experience may prove on closer scrutiny not to have 
as great causal significance as such explanations have assumed ; and 
on the other hand, that in cases where there is no apparent and 
recognized seeking there may have been a good deal done by the 
person which prepared in one way or another for the experience. 

To take only one specific point : prayer is an act which frequently 
precedes both the spontaneous experiences we are studying and the 
highest forms of deliberately sought mystical experiences. Who can 
tell except the subject — and even he rarely, if ever, does tell, and 
perhaps would not be able to tell. — whether his prayer was one 
which had in it the definite desire for some form of mystical ex- 
perience? It is true that writers on mystical theology profess to be 



19 Coe, Sources of the Mystical Revelation, in Hibbert Journal, VI (1908), 
359-372. 



Communion With God 35 

able to distinguish degrees and stages of prayer, distinguishing for 
instance between simple prayer and orison ; but who can tell whether 
the person who in prayer finds a mystical experience may not with- 
out knowing it have passed from one stage to another? In short, 
the degrees and stages described by mystical theology are simply 
attempts at describing different degrees or stages of mystical ex- 
perience. Take, for instance, the kinds of silent prayer described 
and practiced by Cyril Hepher and his associates in The Fellowship 
of Silence and The Fruits of Silence; at what point does it be- 
come a stage in a mystical technique? His first experience in this 
fellowship of silent prayer 20 seems to have brought with it — ap- 
parently to his surprise — a mystical experience which I have counted 
among my instances of consciousness of communion with God; 
but once having had the experience, he makes use of this form of 
prayer thereafter for repetitions of his experience of fellowship 
with God, and it becomes a technical method as deliberately fol- 
lowed as any of the ascetic practices of the mystics. Can all his 
experiences, including the first, be explained in the same way? 

But this train of thought cannot be carried too far. While some 
cases of consciousness of communion with God which were ap- 
parently entirely spontaneous and unsought have come at times of 
prayer, and without the experience altering either the subject's view 
of prayer or habitual use of prayer, there are many cases in which 
prayer is not an antecedent condition. I simply cite this as an il- 
lustration of the difficulty of finding one's way in the midst of the 
complexity of the phenomena under consideration and as a warning 
against dogmatism. 

With these preliminary remarks we may turn to an examination 
of the chief attempts to explain mysticism to see what light they 
may throw upon our specific problem. These explanations may 
for convenience be classified as follows : 

A. Medical theories, in the main materialistic. 

1. States of extraordinary well-being of the physical 

organisms, hyperesthesia. 

2. Pathological nervous conditions — degeneration. 

3. Hallucination. 

B. Psychological theories. 

1. Automatisms — self -hypnosis, "extatic intoxication." 

2. Subliminal invasions of consciousness : 

(a) The more common psychological view, 

(b) The psychoanalytical view. 



20 The Fellowship of Silence, pp. 32 ff . 



36 Communion With God 

3. Theory of social psychology. . 

4. Attainment of higher form of consciousness — first 

steps in a new stage of evolution. 
C. Predominantly theological theories. 

1. The common theological view. 

2. Theosophical and kindred views. 

A. Medical Theories, in the Main Materialistic. 

1. States of Extraordinary W ell-Being of the Physical Organism, 

Hypercesthesia. 

According to this theory, mystical experiences are the result of 
conditions, momentary or of short duration, of extraordinary well- 
being of the human organism — they arise out of physiological con- 
ditions, whose chief characteristic is a heightened sensibility of the 
organism. The well-being, it is true, may not be a matter of the 
organism as a whole, but only of certain organs of the body. For 
instance, the experience of the writer of Twenty Minutes of Reality 
is explained by Dr. Cabot as due to an unusual freshness of the 
retina which gave to everything the writer saw an extraordinary 
vividness, and this gave the sense of beauty and significance to 
what was seen. 21 This would be to reduce the experience to some- 
thing parallel to the remarkable clarity and freshness of things when 
seen through glasses which heighten a person's power of sight — an 
experience which many persons have had when for the first time 
they had an oculist test their eyes. 

While Dr. Cabot's explanation may be possible for the particular 
experience to which it is applied, yet it remains even for it only a 
theory which it would be difficult to demonstrate. Even if proved 
for this particular case, it would be dangerous to generalize from 
that case. In so far as the experience of communion with God 
is connected with sense organs, it is by no means exclusively con- 
nected with sight. Hearing is only less frequent than sight as the 
sense to which the experience is attached. Many such experiences 
in so far as they are sensational in nature would come under the 
head of coensesthesia. But it would surely be difficult to maintain 
that all such experiences are due to coen aesthetic sensations arising 
from a sudden increase in the well-being of the bodily organism. 
It is this type of theory which, as I gather it, is maintained by God- 
fernaux and combatted (successfully, it seems to me) by Hock- 
ing, 22 who, be it marked, makes his defence in the field of mysti- 
cism proper : 



21 Atlantic Monthly, vol. 117 (1916), pp. 597 ff. 

22 Hocking, Meaning of God, pp. 292-295, 



Communion With God 37 

"If there is any rhythm in life which religion follows and cul- 
tivates, it is something more than the simple ebb and flow of our 
'animal spirits.' Excitement and depression, high spirits and low 
spirits, are organic fluctuations which leave their mark on the 
religious life as on all life. Undoubtedly there is a kind of vision 
connected with the high places in this vital rhythm, which resembles, 
and may actually develop into, mystical experience ... I can 
conceive it possible that the habit of worship might take possession 
of some such subtle wave in our organic life ; but I cannot think, 
as do certain writers, that this type of flux brings us very near the 
mystic's experience, and for the following reasons:" 

In a footnote Professor Hocking quotes these words from God- 
fernaux : "Cette oscillation constante du ton vital est bien, semble 
't il, l'aspect physiologique propre du sentiment religieux 
Quiconque eprouve le sentiment religieux est un extatique a quelque 
degre." 

Professor Hocking's arguments against this view are these: 1. 
Quasi-mystical moods of this sort are as likely, perhaps more likely, 
to come over the mind when the physique is at a low ebb. 2. If 
mystic appearance has its rhythm, it shows little sign of regularity — 
it is not periodic. The worshipper's will and conscience take part 
in the affair, and not the organic wave alone. 3. There is no de- 
pression which corresponds to the constancy and prominence of the 
mystic's elevation. The elevation of the mystic is not in such wise 
above the normal that it must be compensated by a corresponding 
below-normal. On the contrary, it seems to be, in some sense, 
another normal. Something of its content and quality tends to be- 
come a permanent possession of consciousness ; which would not be 
the case if it were simply an extreme, or hyper-tension." 

In addition to what Hocking says, I should be inclined to stress 
the fact that those who have had the experience invariably tend to 
externalize the cause. It is true that this may be due to a failure 
to make proper and adequate introspection; it is notorious how 
difficult introspection is in matters connected with organic sensa- 
tions. Only in case a sufficient number of competent psychologists 
who had had the experience of communion with God agreed in as- 
serting that they found on careful introspection that their own ex- 
periences were explicable on the basis of organic sensation, could 
the matter be regarded as settled. Until then, the explanation of 
mystical states of consciousness as due to extraordinary states of 
physical well-being remains a bare hypothesis drawn from one field 
of experience and applied to another in clear opposition to the feel- 



38 Communion With God 

ing and conviction of those who have had the experiences in ques- 
tion. Conceivably the theory might explain the experience on its 
sensational side, although this remains to be proved, but even then 
we should still have the question, Why do those who have the ex- 
perience interpret it — both at the time and later in retrospect — in 
the way they do? The theory would explain, if at all, only the 
pysiological elements in the experience, not the psychical. It is very 
easy to believe, in fact almost impossible not to believe, that such 
pysiological changes in bodily condition as this theory presupposes 
are extremely common among men, both among those who have 
mystical states of consciousness and among those who do not. Why 
should those who have mystical states of consciousness give a mys- 
tical interpretation to some such physiological changes and not to 
others, and those who do not have mystical states of consciousness 
interpret none of their physiological changes mystically. A theory 
which directly contradicts the feeling and conviction of those who 
have actually had an experience needs to show convincing proofs, 
and this theory of extraordinary states of physical well-being has 
failed to do. 

2. The Pathological View — Degeneration. 

Another view of mysticism, belonging to the class of what James 
would have called "medical materialism," which seems to the non- 
medical reader the direct opposite of the view just presented, is that 
mystical experiences are due to pathological conditions of the nerv- 
ous system. According to this theory the mystic is a degenere, even 
though he may perhaps be a degenere superieur. This view has 
found expression in many quarters, perhaps in its most thorough- 
going form in Nordau's Degeneration. Murisier in his Maladies du 
sentiment religieux gives expression to a modification of this view. 
Janet, while he does not assert that all persons who have mystical 
experiences have pathological conditions, says that the establishment 
and propagation of religions have been the work very largely of 
hysterics. 23 

Nordau may be quoted in illustration of this view.- 4 According 
to him, mysticism is one of the main characteristics or symptoms of 
degeneration, the closing item in a list of the "stigmata" of degener- 
ation, the other members of which are: physical stigmata in the 
shape of various deformities and asymmetries, moral insanity, emo- 
tionalism, dejectedness, disinclination to activity, predilection for 



23 Major Symptoms of Hysteria, pp. 7- 

24 Degeneration, pp. 17-22; 45 ff. 



Communion With God 39 

revery, attitude of doubt which leads to attempts at creating meta- 
physical systems and at reforming the world. Mysticism as he 
defines it includes more than religious mysticism proper and appar- 
ently would cover all kinds and varieties of mystical states of con- 
sciousness. "The word describes a state of mind in which the sub- 
ject imagines that he perceives or divines unknown and inexplicable 
relations amongst phenomena, discerns in things hints at mysteries, 
and regards them as symbols, by which a dark power seeks to un- 
veil or, at least, to indicate all sorts of marvels which he endeavors 
to guess, though generally in vain. This condition of mind is always 
connected with strong emotional excitement, which consciousness 
conceives to be the result of its presentiments, although it is this 
excitement, on the contrary, which is pre-existent, while the pre- 
sentiments are caused by it and receive from it their peculiar direc- 
tion and color." He then goes on to inquire "in what manner the 
degenerate or exhausted brain falls into mysticism." His answer 
presupposes a physiological origin for all mental activity ; that is, 
that thoughts and feelings depend upon external or organic stimuli 
and upon processes of catabolism and anabolism of the cells of the 
nervous system. The whole thing is a physiological process, and all 
degeneration, of which mysticism is one of the chief forms, is due to 
diseased conditions of cells in the nervous system. 

Now it is not to be denied that Nordau has presented his theory 
with power and ability. Nor is to be denied that pathological condi- 
tions have existed in many persons who have had mystical experi- 
ences, especially of the extreme type. But at the most this would 
be to create a presumption that all mystical experiences are to be 
found in persons who have pathological conditions, but it would by 
no means prove it. Degeneration must affect a very large propor- 
tion of human beings, if Nordau's assertions are true. Perhaps, if 
too high a percentage falls within a certain category, we should have 
to say that the condition is characteristic of many human beings 
rather than call it a pathological condition. 

The weakness of Nordau's theory, as of medical theories in gen- 
eral, is that the conditions of the extreme cases are read back into 
the less extreme. It is always difficult in considering mental phe- 
nomena to draw the line between the normal and the abnormal. But 
somewhere a line is crossed, and the normal and the abnormal are 
decidedly different from each other. The medical mind always tends 
to judge all variations from a never clearly defined norm in the light 
of the most extreme variations, and in the process the norm disap- 
pears. In fact, in most mental phenomena the difference is one of 



40 Communion With God 

degree, not of kind, and medical theory in mental matters has too 
often tended to obliterate degrees. It is because of this indiscriminate 
lumping of all mystical states of consciousness together and viewing 
all in the lurid light of mind far gone in disease that his treatment of 
mysticism remains so unconvincing. Murisier, who admits what he 
calls a sane mysticism and gives it a rightful place in religion, 
avoids this error. 

Moreover, the physiological theory of mental activity remains only 
hypothesis, and hypothesis at that which is far more metaphysical 
than scientific. It goes beyond the theory of psycho-physical paral- 
lelism and ascribes precedence and causative power to the physi- 
cal. It is well in this connection to remember that we know far 
more about the mental processes than we do about the physiological 
processes. The physiological processes are largely inferences from 
the mental processes. To infer from the mental processes certain 
physiological processes, for which we have the scantiest of evidence 
aside from the known mental processes, and then to set up these in- 
ferred and practically unknown physiological changes as the real 
cause of the mental processes is precarious logic. It is worth noting 
that Jung tells us that even among the insane physical changes in 
the brain and nervous system can be actually discovered in less 
than one fourth of the cases. 25 If this is true among the insane, in 
whom disease is patent, it surely is pure hypothesis to say that the 
mental experiences of large numbers of persons who show no sign 
of diseased nervous systems other than the fact of having mystical 
states of consciousness are symtomatic of and caused by pathologi- 
cal conditions of the nervous system. 

It will be noted that in my discussion of this theory I have not 
denied the possibility of an element of truth in it. What I mean to 
criticize is the logical basis of the argument by which the theory is 
supported. The whole matter of the relation of mental processes 
to physical is only at the beginning of careful and accurate inves- 
tigation, and no certain conclusions have as yet been reached. 

3. The Theory of Hallucination, 

The theory that such states of consciousness as we have been 
studying are hallucinatory in their nature is a sort of transitional 
theory between those of medical materialism and the strictly psy- 
chological theories. 

At the outset of a consideration of this way of accounting for 
the phenomena we are met with the fact that only a small minority 



^Analytical Psychology, p. 318. 



Communion With God 41 

of cases of consciousness of communion with God involve hallu- 
cinations in the ordinary sense of the word; i. e., actual and defi- 
nitely localized sensory impressions — vision of God or Christ, words 
heard, and the like. (See above, pages 14, 15). This is true, it 
may be said, even in the great mystics. Some of their experiences 
were accompanied by definite sensory phenomena of hallucinatory 
character, but by no means all nor their most valued experiences. 
The mystics attach inferior value to experiences which involve 
visions and locutions, and hold that these may be of diabolic instead 
of divine origin. This, to be sure, is a theological attitude, but the 
fact remains that they were well aware of the nature of sensory 
hallucinations and are agreed in asserting that their most valued 
experiences are of another order. In fact, so strong is this tes- 
timony that there are few careful students who would now attempt 
to explain mystical states of consciousness by a crude application 
of a theory of hallucination. 

What is involved in most of the . experiences, whether of the 
spontaneous type we are studying or in the deliberately sought ex- 
periences of the mystics, is a strong sense of a divine presence, usu- 
ally not clearly localized, distinctly non-sensorial in character, usu- 
ally conceived of as personal, though sometimes lacking this latter 
characteristic. W&dsworth's familiar lines would probably be ac- 
cepted by most of those who have had the experience in question 
as a clear and compact statement of at least a part, if not the whole, 
of what they experienced: 

I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. 

(Tintern Abbey, 93-102) 

With this may be compared the last few lines, which I believe to 
be characteristic of the state of consciousness in question, in the 
first of the typical cases which I cited at the beginning of this study 
(page 8 above.) The question is whether such experiences are in 
any sense hallucinatory, and if so in what sense and to what degree. 
The answer is made difficult by the fact that there is a considerable 
diversity of opinion as to the nature and causes of hallucinations. 



42 Communion Wtth God 

In the answers to my questionnaire there was only one person 
who admitted anything like sensory hallucination, the one who 
spoke of "the rushing musical sound of wings" during the celebra- 
tion of Mass (see above, p. 29), and even she holds that hal- 
lucination would not explain her experience. One of the questions 
I asked was, "Would you be satisfied if the experience could be (ap- 
parently conclusively) explained on the theory of hallucination?" I 
can see now that the question was poorly worded, but it is inter- 
esting to note that invariably the answer to this question is "No." 
Nor have I found any person who has recorded such experiences 
who would offer hallucination as the explanation. It is difficult to 
tell how much weight should be given to this fact, yet I believe that 
it ought to be taken into consideration. Most of the persons who 
have told of such experiences are persons who would be perfectly 
capable of distinguishing between actual sense impressions and hal- 
lucinations, and some of them have actually described hallucinations 
which they have experienced in other things. It is also significant 
that these persons hold to the reality of the impression they have 
received even after the possibility of hallucination has been pointed 
out to them. It is true that the insane do the same with their de- 
lusions and hallucinations, but of the perfect sanity of all but an 
insignificant minority of the persons whose cases I have investigated 
in this study I have not the slightest doubt. If hallucination is the 
explanation, then hallucination means something which it apparently 
does not mean to most persons who have had the experience. 

The most careful and cautious statement of the theory of hallu- 
cination with which I am acquainted is that of Delacroix, 26 who 
bases his theory both upon independently gathered material and 
upon a careful and critical study of previous literature. He begins 
by remarking that the mystics he has studied have no psycho- sen- 
sory hallucinations, or at least have them very seldom, then, follow- 
ing the mystics themselves, distinguishes between interior words and 
imaginary visions on the one hand and intellectual words and in- 
tellectual visions on the other. In considering the former he fol- 
lows earlier writers, Baillarger and Seglas, in assigning them to the 
class of psychic or pseudo hallucinations ; that is, "mental repre- 
sentations which are lively, animated, precise, stable, spontaneous, 
incoercible, but lack exteriority." They are the visions which the 
mystics say they do not see with the bodily eyes but with the eye of 
the soul. They may be either visual or verbal. He then admits the 
criticism of another writer, Bernard Leroy, that these psychic hal- 



2'' ttudes sur mysticisme . App. I, pp. 427-450. 



Communion With God 43 

lucinations have been but little studied except by the mystics them- 
selves and are met with in almost none but mystics. He concludes, 
however, that it is well to maintain the classification, in view (1) of 
the fact that he thinks he has observed similar phenomena in a case 
of delirium, (2) of the testimony of the mystics, and (3) of the fact 
that the attempt to explain them as ordinary hallucinations has 
failed. 

In considering the second class of psychic hallucinations, viz., 
intellectual words and intellectual visions, he connects the mystical 
impressions of divine presence with other impressions of presence, 
especially impressions of the presence of absent human beings. His 
theory in explanation is that a certain group of emotions becomes 
attached to certain persons or to certain ideas of beings not known 
in a sensory way. and that if the emotional group is in some way 
awakened in a dream or hypnoid state the impression tends to ob- 
jectify itself in an hallucinatory manner. "The emotions of pres- 
ence of which we are speaking are given most often in sleep or 
hypnoid conditions; that is, states in which the mental control is 
suspended. The intense and sudden emotion surging up in this 
sleeping consciousness is not restrained and controlled by a clear 
consciousness of the external world or by logical processes. It ex- 
pands and gives itself an object in an hallucinatory way." (P. 441.) 
"If our hypothesis is correct, we understand why this curious symp- 
tom occurs in cases so diverse and without any definite aetiology. 
It is a phenomenon of the dream state, and it suffices that the 
favorable conditions which we have disengaged should occur in 
order that it appear. It has the same origin as a number of little 
momentary psychic disturbances, which are also related to a mo- 
mentary weakening of the personal consciousness, to an instant of 
disorientation." (P. 443.) The closing pages of his appendix give 
a remarkably clear and penetrating application of his hypothesis to 
the impressions of divine presence which St. Theresa had. 

Now there is no doubt in my mind that many of the experiences 
of the mystics may be explained in this way ; but I doubt very much 
if the theory of hallucination, even when presented in as able a 
manner as Delacroix has presented it, will account for all the spon- 
taneous mystical experiences. The crux of the whole matter is the 
assumption that a dream or hypnoid state is the condition in which 
an emotional group can transform itself into an hallucination of 
presence. As I understand it, such an experience, unless it were 
the effects of a dream or dream state carried over into waking con- 
sciousness, would have to be induced by hypnotic means. Hypno- 



44 Communion With God 

tism may be either produced by some operator other than the sub- 
ject or self-induced. In either case, it involves a narrowing of the 
field of consciousness to a certain group of ideas or emotions, and 
the hallucination takes place in this field of ideas or emotions. Now 
such conditions are not found in a great many of the cases in which 
there is a sense of presence, whether that presence be recognized as 
human or divine. St. Theresa may hypnotize herself in the absorp- 
tion of her prayer; her consciousness is then narrowed to the 
thought of God as the Church has taught her to think of God, and 
her impression of the presence of God or of Christ may then be 
explained as a hypnotically induced hallucination — it falls within 
the range of ideas and emotions upon which consciousness has been 
fixed. So, too, we might explain some of the cases in which the 
sporadic sense of divine presence comes to persons who are in great 
distress of some kind and who are keenly conscious of the need of 
some aid or guidance beyond their own or any human power. So. 
for example, could be explained the experience of the woman who 
found God present when she watched by the sick bed of her hus- 
band and realized that all human help was impossible. 27 Conscious- 
ness is narrowed to the ideas and emotions connected with her hus- 
band's desperate condition. She is in a hypnoid state, and the mere 
awakening of the idea of God, the agonized prayer, brings the ideas 
concerning God with which she was familiar — his omnipresence and 
his power to help in time of need — and these ideas, together with 
their attached emotions, objectify themselves (as Delacroix would 
say) in the sense of an external presence. 

But what are we to say to cases in which the experience comes 
suddenly in times when the consciousness seems to be perfectly nor- 
mal? The typical case which was cited at the very beginning of our 
study seems to be of this knid. It is impossible to find in the ac- 
counts as given any indications of dream or hypnoid conditions. Con- 
sciousness is normal and alert, filled with other things ; then of a 
sudden comes a consciousness of a different sort. Consciousness 
had not been somnolent; there was full and clear consciousness of 
the external world ; as far as we are told ideas concerning God had 
not been consciously present. Hallucination it may be, but if hallu- 
cination follows the lines laid down by Delacroix this case falls out- 
side the class. 

It may be said in general that when such experiences as we have 
been studying occur in connection with other experiences in which 
there is consciousness of great strain and tension — as in times of 



27 Pratt, op. cit., p. 250. 



Communion With God 45 

great anxiety for self or loved ones, in grief, in times of doubt and 
feeling of need of guidance and direction, in the crisis of a some- 
what prolonged conversion, perhaps rather often in the stress and 
strain of adolescence — Delacroix's explanation may help us to un- 
derstand the experience. The concentration of the mind upon the 
strain and tension may very well induce a hypnoid condition in 
which hallucinations easily arise. But it fails to account for a good 
many cases in which such conditions are not met. Where there is 
intense desire for God or intense consciousness of the need of what 
it is felt God alone can give, there we may expect to find hypnoid 
conditions in which the generation of an hallucinatory sense of God's 
presence in the manner described by Delacroix is easy. But what 
shall we say of those cases in which God's presence is felt, such de- 
sire or feeling of need not being an immediate antecedent? 

Another difficulty comes out in connection with that part of Del- 
acroix's theory which assumes that mystical experiences are con- 
nected with a momentary state of disorientation. It is hard to see 
how so negative a cause could produce so positive an effect as these 
experiences have in the lives of those to whom they come. An in- 
stant of disorientation might well bring the effects that so-called 
phantasms have, the fear and horror which characterize practically 
all the instances of a sense of presence which Delacroix cites. But 
the affective tone of mystical experiences is notably, with only rare 
exceptions, of the opposite kind. Sidis also points out that in hyp- 
notism the patient resists the hypnotic suggestion, although he is 
constrained to carry it out. 28 I believe it to be generally true that 
the momentary loss of personal consciousness, of instants of dis- 
orientation, except when produced by drugs or narcotics or in- 
duced by such means as dancing, crystal gazing, or other means of 
inducing ecstatic states, has as its affective tone the feelings of dread, 
horror, constraint, and the like. Those who have mystical exper- 
iences would agree in saying that instead of disorientation they ex- 
perience then true orientation of the self. In such a case I should 
say that the judgment of those who have had the experience is more 
likely to be true than the judgment of those who have not. 

In conclusion, it may be pointed out that the theory of hallucina- 
tion, in whatever form it is held, would involve when applied to ex- 
periences which profess to belong to another realm than that of the 
physical universe an attitude of negation towards the possibility of 
immediate contact with such a realm. It is one thing to say that 
some experiences are clearly hallucinatory ; it is another thing to 



28 Sidis, Psychology of Suggestion, pp. 11 ff. 



46 Communion With God 

say that all such experiences must be hallucinatory. The logical im- 
plication of a thorough-going theory of hallucination is that only- 
sense impressions are possible to men, although these may be either 
true or false. By definition a hallucination is a "perception of objects 
with no reality, or experience of sensations with no external cause." 
To explain all experiences in which men have felt that they have 
come into immediate contact with God as hallucinations is equivalent 
to saying either that there is no God who can come into immediate 
contact with men, or that if there is a God he does not come into 
immediate contact with men. In other words, if there is a God who 
comes into immediate contact with men, then some of these exper- 
iences are not hallucinations. 

It may be pointed out in this connection that the conclusion ar- 
rived at by very careful and critical treatment of the results of the 
only extensive census of hallucinations ever made was that hallu- 
cinations of the presence of human beings were "veridical," i. e., cor- 
respond to some demonstrable fact, 440 times as often as they might 
be expected to do on the laws of chance. This should be kept in 
mind in forming a final judgment as to the explanation of the phen- 
omena we are investigating. 29 

B. Psychological Theories. 
1. Automatisms: Self -hypnosis: Extatic Intoxication. 

The consideration of the theory of hallucination leads by a nat- 
ural and easy transition to the consideration of the first of the defi- 
nitely psychological theories in explanation of such experiences as 
we are studying, the theory of automatisms. The theory of auto- 
matisms underlies most of the other psychological explanations 
and itself leads easily to, and to some extent implies, theories of the 
subconscious. 

Coe gives a convenient and compact statement which we may use 
as a starting-point in the discussion of this theory. 30 "The problem 
of msyticism," he writes, "as far as psychology is concerned, arises 
from the fact that we partially, but only partially, foresee and con- 
trol our bodily and mental changes. What we do that is habitual, 
familiar, or foreseen we call our own. But if my hand writes some- 
thing that I have no recollection of intending to write, or possibly 
something that I have no recollection of having written, we call 
such writing automatic. So, also, we have automatic speech. Sim- 



29 The most convenient statement of the facts in this matter may be found 
in the article Hallucinations (by W. McDougall) in the Encyc. Brit., 11th ed 

30 Coe, Psychology of Religion, p. 264. 



Communion With God 47 

ilarly, if I seem to hear the voice of a person who is not within 
hearing distance, or to see someone whose body is certainly far away, 
psychology calls the experience hallucination or mental automatism. 
The term 'automatic' applies also to ideas or thought structures that 
unexpectedly dart into consciousness. The association of ideas is 
thus always at least partly automatic." 

This theory would run somewhat as follows, stated in the most 
compact form : The sudden and spontaneous consciousness of com- 
munion with God is an automatism of the sensory type ; the idea 
or thought structure (including the accompanying emotions) of a 
divine being is aroused within the subject's mind by some associa- 
tion of ideas or emotions unperceived by the subject, reaches for 
some reason to such a state of intensity as to produce a pseudo- 
hallucination of the presence of the divine being, and is accepted 
by the subject as an experience of external reality because of the fact 
that it has not come to him by the ordinary mental processes with 
which he is acquainted. 

Dr. Prince's words show the way in which the theory is applied 
by some to mystical phenomena: "The evidence is conclusive that 
subconscious ideas can excite hallucinations in the primary con- 
sciousness. It follows that we may not be able to determine the 
genesis or origin of any given hallucination without knowing the 
content of the subconsciousness. If someone versed in abnormal 
psychology had hypnotized the numerous saints and sinners who have 
experienced visions and voices and examined their individual con- 
sciousnesses, we should know much more about their hallucinations 
Applying what we know of abnormal psychology to the 
visions and voices of historical personages, as we are entitled to do, 
we may safely conclude that these hallucinations were sensory 
automatisms generated by their own thoughts, conscious or sub- 
conscious. When we look deeper into the mechanism of these hal- 
lucinations and seek for an explanation of the mode in which ideas 
transform themselves into visions or voices, we find that as yet we 
have very little definite knowledge." 31 

I must give space also to Dr. Prince's capital instance of such a 
vision. 32 After telling us that Miss Beauchamp as a child had vis- 
ions of the Madonna and Christ, and used to believe that she had 
seen them, and that when troubled about school lessons or the loss 
of something she would resort to prayer, be apt then to have a 
vision, and after the vision find her troubles no longer bothered 



31 Prince, The Dissociation, pp. 510-511, 512. 

32 Ibid., Appendix L, pp. 548-550. 



48 Communion With God 

her, be able to get her lessons and to find lost objects, he tells of 
a specific vision which he had opportunity to study in detail. 

"Miss Beauchamp had lost a bank check and was much troubled 
concerning it. For five days she had made an unsuccessful hunt for 
it, systematically going through everything in her room. She re- 
membered distinctly placing the check between the leaves of a book, 
when someone knocked at the door, and this was the last she saw 
of the check. She had become very much troubled about the matter, 
and in consequence after going to bed that night she was unable to 
sleep, and rose several times to make a further hunt. Finally, at 
3 o'clock in the morning, she went to bed and fell asleep. At 4 
o'clock she awoke with the consciousness of a presence in the room. 
She arose and in a moment saw a vision of Christ, who did not 
speak, but smiled. She at once felt as she used to, that everything 
was well, and that the vision foretold that she would find the check. 
All her anxiety left her at once. The figure retreated toward the 
bureau, but the thought flashed into her mind that the lost check was 
in the drawer of her desk. A search, however, showed that it was 
not there. She then walked automatically to the bureau, opened the 
top drawer, took out some stuff upon which she had been sewing, 
unfolded it, and there was the check along with one or two other 
papers." 

Dr. Prince then tells us how by means of hypnosis the facts as to 
how the check came to be placed in the drawer were recovered for 
the memory. He concludes thus : 

"It is pretty clear, then, that the finding of the check in this case 
was accomplished automatically by a subconscious memory of Miss 
Beauchamp's act of putting it away, and that the vision of Christ 
was the resuscitation of an old automatism, under the influence part- 
ly of this subconscious memory, and partly of the suggestion derived 
from our conversation about some visions of her childhood held a 
few hours previously. 

"Visions like those of Christ and the Madonna, which express 
the conscious or the subconscious thought of the individual, are very 
common in religious history. From the point of view of abnormal 
psychology they are all to be interpreted as sensory automatisms 
of which the genetic factor is the person's own consciousness." 

With this should be compared the discussion in the same book of 
"The Psychology of Sudden Conversion," 33 in which in addition 
to an experience of Miss Beauchamp's the conversion of Ratisbonne 
is subjected to analysis. According to Dr. Prince's theory, between 



& Ibid., Chap. XXI. 



Communion With God 49 

the ending of the state of depression and the beginning of the state 
of exaltation, which is a common characteristic of sudden con- 
versions, there is a gap in the mental processes and in the memory 
of the subject. By hypnotizing Miss Beauchamp he was able to 
learn what had passed during the time for which there was amnesia. 
What happened was that she was put into a trance-like condition by 
fixing her eyes upon one of the shining brass lamps in the church. 
In this hypnotic state her consciousness was made up of a great 
many memories, each accompanied by emotion. Upon awakening 
from the hypnotic condition the memories vanished from conscious- 
ness, but the emotions persisted. At first there were no ideas in 
consciousness, only these emotions. Soon ideas came into her mind, 
which, due perhaps to her thoughts before the trance and to the 
fact that she was in church, were religious ideas ; and the emotions 
carried over from the trance attached themselves to these ideas. 
She knew nothing of the time gap, and naturally believed that she 
had had a divine visitation— or, in the language we have used in 
this study, that she had been in immediate communion with God. 
Much the same explanation is given for Ratisbonne's experience. 

Dr. Prince states the fundamental point in his theory in these 
words: "The fact that in times of sudden conversion voices are 
often heard, lights seen, visions witnessed, etc., together with an 
overpowering emotion, is evidence that these people at such mo- 
ments are not in a stable state of mind, but rather, it would seem, 
in a trance-like or hypnoid condition, or whatever name we choose 
to call it by. In this state a complete recognition of the surround- 
ings may be lost, and the subject is dominated by hallucinatory 
ideas and emotions." 34 

He goes on to add that such states are not fundamentally differ- 
ent from hysterical states which follow an emotional shock, of 
which he gives a few examples. "But it may be that effects psy- 
chologically similar may be produced by powerful ecstatic emotions 
which the religious imagination calls forth. The development of 
such exalted emotions becomes easier when preceded by the men- 
tal strain ordinarily induced by the doubts, fears, and anxieties 
which go with the intense introspection which religious scruples 
call forth. Torn and distracted by doubt, the personality is easily 
disintegrated, and then the ecstatic emotions associated with re- 
ligious hopes and longings take root. At this crucial moment the 
subject, like St. Paul when he heard the voice of Christ, perhaps 
half oblivious of his surroundings, sees visions which are apt to be 



3* Ibid., p. 343. 



50 Communion With God 

the expression of his new belief, and hears a voice which speaks 
his own previous thoughts." 

I have given this large amount of space to Dr. Prince's discussion 
because, while our study is not one in the psychology of conver- 
sion, the principles which he sets forth in this connection are evi- 
dently those which he would apply if he were studying our specific 
topic. All such spontaneous, sporadic states of consciousness are 
sensory automatisms, in which the probabilities are that there was 
a time gap in the subject's ordinary consciousness, of which he has 
no knowledge or memory, a hypnoid state rilled with certain mem- 
ories and emotions ; the ©motions persisting upon recovery of or- 
dinary consciousness are attached to the ideas which then come 
into the person's mind ; and any directions or convictions received 
from the state and interpreted by the subject as given him by his 
divine companion are in reality only his own thoughts suddenly 
projected into consciousness and endued with dynamic power be- 
cause of the emotions which have attached themselves to them. 
It will be seen that in reality the theory of automatisms as thus pre- 
sented involves a temporary and more or less complete dissociation 
of the subject's personality. It is because the ideas and emotions 
come to the subject from a part of his consciousness which at the 
time of his experience is strange to him, and because, owing to 
this fact, they seem not to be his own ideas and emotions, but given 
to him by some one else, that he thinks he has been in communion 
with another personality. According to the character of the ideas 
and emotions his judgment as to the kind of personality he has 
been in communion with will vary — human beings (whether living 
or dead), diabolical or divine beings. If a sensory hallucination is 
present, the conviction as to the nature of the visitant will be in- 
tensified. 

It is obvious that there is a very close connection between this 
theory and the theory of hallucination which we have just discussed. 
One of the causes of hallucinations is sensory automatisms. While 
some hallucinations may be caused by imperfectly apprehended 
peripheral stimuli, and others by abnormal conditions of the neural 
connections, still others are the result of sensory automatisms. 
Much, therefore, of what I have said in discussing the theory of 
hallucination as applied to the experiences we are studying will 
apply also to the theory of automatisms. 

The crux of the matter is the assumption of momentary disso- 
ciation and the probability of trance or hypnotic conditions. That 
such is the case in many experiences of the mystics who have prac- 
ticed a systematic method may easily enough be the case. It is 



Communion With God 51 

to such experiences that the explanations for mystical experiences 
by Coe 35 and Leuba 36 apply. The question is as to whether all 
mystical experiences can be so explained. Dr. Prince is more cau- 
tious in stating his conclusions than the two writers last named, and 
admits that a critical analysis of a large number of cases made at 
the time would be necessary in order to establish the theory with 
certainty. Until such a critical examination can be made, I do not 
see how any judgment can be given except upon a priori grounds. 
No previous study has furnished the necessary basis for a safe in- 
ductive conclusion, and my own is equally defective in this respect. 
All we can safely say is that in some cases the experience of com- 
munion seems to be due to automatism ; as, for instance, the fourth 
of the typical cases cited at the beginning of this study. What was 
said above (p. 44) as to conditions of distress and uncertainty and 
the like being favorable to the production of hallucinations would 
hold true also for the production of automatisms. The condition 
of peace, joy, certainty, and the like which follow the experience 
are felt all the more intensely by contrast with the preceding state ; 
and the subject's consciousness that his own ordinary powers and 
abilities were inadequate to the production of such effects would 
lead him naturally, perhaps almost inevitably, to conclude that some 
divine power had come to his aid. 

It hardly need be said that from a religious point of view even if 
sensory automatisms be the psychological explanation of such ex- 
periences, this fact does not thereby discredit the subject's belief in 
divine action. It merely explains what the psychologist looking 
merely at mental processes can see. If God acts directly upon men, 
that might be the way in which he acts, for all that the psychologist 
can say. So competent a psychologist as Royce apparently believes 
that God does respond in man's extremity. As reported by Dr. 
Slattery, he says : "We come to such deep places that we can only 
cry. We are astonished that we can cry. And then we become 
aware that our cry is heard. And He who hears is God. And so, 
God is often defined by the plain man as He who hears men's cry 
from the depths." Dr. Slattery goes on to say that he believes these 
words were written by Royce as a result of the experiences which 
came to him in connection with the death of his only child. 37 In 
other words, while such experiences may be sensory automatisms, 
they may not be merely sensory automatisms. All that the psycholo- 



37 Certain American Faces, New York, 1918, pp. 60-61. 

35 Coe, in Hibbert Journal, VI (1908), 359-372. 

36 Leuba, Extatic Intoxication, in American Journal of Psychology, XXVIII 
(1917), 578 ft. 



52 Communion With God 

gist can say is that, from his point of view, that is how they are to 
be described. 

The theory of automatisms is fundamental in modern psychology 
in explaining all phenomena which are regarded as more or less 
abnormal. It is a theory which may be held without any clearly 
defined theory as to the subconscious or unconscious portions of 
the human mind. As Prince states in words which I have quoted 
above, the idea which suddenly irrupts into consciousness may be 
an idea of the person's conscious self, and even hallucinations may 
be generated by conscious thoughts. Usually, however, the theory 
of automatisms is held in conjunction with a theory of the subcon- 
scious, and automatisms are regarded as likely to be due to invasions 
of the consciousness by elements drawn from the subconscious. We 
turn then to the explanations of mystical experiences which depend 
upon some form or other of theories regarding the subconscious. 

2. Subliminal Invasions of Consciousness. 
a. The More Common Psychological View. 

As to the nature, contents, and functions of the mental processes 
which lie below the threshold of consciousness there are almost as 
many views as there are writers. Most of the students of mystical 
phenomena explain the phenomena as to some extent at least due to 
invasions of consciousness by processes which have had their origin 
and a large share of their development in the subliminal region ; but 
it can hardly be said that beyond this there is any full agreement. 
Each student interprets the part played by the subconscious in ac- 
cordance with the conception he holds regarding the subconscious. 

This being the case, I shall not take time to state previous the- 
ories of the subconscious and its part in religion, but state at once 
my own. 

To me the subconscious means the whole of a person's past which 
is not at any given moment within the field of his consciousness, to- 
gether with the "fringe" of that moment's consciousness. It is thus 
a contsantly growing mass. It includes all that has ever entered 
either the focus of attention or the marginal fringe of consciousness 
and made enough of an impression to be recorded and to be capable 
of influencing future states of consciousness. How much the last 
mentioned qualification includes and excludes I do not know, nor 
do I believe it possible to know. Whatever new impression comes 
to the person tends to awaken memories of previous similar impres- 
sions and to relate itself to them. A part of this total mass of past 
impressions can be revived voluntary by memory, or, when aroused 



Communion With God 53 

by a new stimulus which associates itself to that part, will be re- 
membered as belonging to the person's past. Another part, how- 
ever, is either so deeply buried or so slightly recorded that it cannot 
be voluntarily recalled by memory. It is probable that the larger 
part of that which belonged to the "fringe" is included in this part 
which cannot be voluntarily recalled. An indefinite portion of this 
non-recalled mass of impressions may be involuntarily recalled by 
new impressions which in some way relate themselves to it but remain 
unrecognized by the subject's personal memory. In this case, what 
is present is most likely to be the emotion which the original impres- 
sion made at the time ; the ideas, if any, which at the time were con- 
nected with the impression will not be recalled in recognizable form. 
They may, or they may not, a little later, come into consciousness. 
If they do come into consciousness, they will seem new and strange 
to the person, will not seem to be his own. The most permanent, 
and the largest part, of whatever of the person's past is in this way 
conserved is the emotions. His conscious thoughts and ideas perish 
more quickly and in much larger measure. The subconscious is, 
then, pre-eminently, although not exclusively, the stored up emo- 
tional experiences of the person's total past, plus, as was said at the 
beginning, the "fringe" of that moment, including in the latter not 
merely external impressions but mental representations not con- 
sciously attended to. 

In addition to these individual impressions thus recorded and 
capable of influencing future states of consciousness, the subcon- 
scious includes the racial inheritance of the person. There is im- 
planted in the very organism of the person certain racial memories 
which take the form largely of emotional predispositions and instinc- 
tive reactions. These work for the most part independently of the 
consciousness, or at least of the volition, of the individual. They 
are due mostly, if not entirely, to the physiological make-up of the 
human body and its nervous system. It is possible also that aside 
from these racial traits there are too traits drawn from the indi- 
vidual ancestry of the person which form a part of his subconscious- 
ness, although the whole matter of heredity is as yet in a condition 
from which no sure conclusions may be drawn. The subconscious 
includes, then, not merely the total past of the particular individual, 
but his racial past and his inheritance (whatever that may be) from 
his more immediate ancestry. 

Now it is obvious that this subconscious part of a person is bound 
to play a very large part in his life at all times and to influence 
greatly his way of thinking and of reacting to his environment. 



54 Communion With God 

What we are concerned with at the present is not the total influence 
of the unconscious, but its part in these sporadic and spontaneous 
mystical states of consciousness. It would seem that there are two 
conditions which might facilitate the invasion of ordinary conscious- 
ness by influences from this large subconscious background of the 
person's life, which at first glance seem to be almost diametrically 
opposite. The first is a large diminution of specific attention, the 
state approaching mental void or passivity. This may come, for 
instance, in times of fatigue, of convalescence, of lowering of vital- 
ity, of diseased nervous conditions, of simple inaction (as is often 
the case when a person is out of doors somewhat passively enjoying 
nature). Its extreme is, of course, the loss of consciousness from 
one cause or other — in which, be it noted, what is lost is conscious- 
ness, not subconsciousness, which latter is demonstrably present, as 
is shown by the full recollection of what passed in periods of uncon- 
sciousness which has sometimes been gained by hypnotism or auto- 
matic writing or the like. This latter is of importance in explaining 
mystical revelation under the influence of anaesthetics and other 
drugs. In moments of this complete or partial abeyance of con- 
sciousness what is active is the subconscious elements of the per- 
sonality, and these are in large part so strange and foreign to the 
workings of ordinary consciousness that they seem not to be a part 
of the self, but something given to the person from without. 

The other condition which facilitates invasion of consciousness 
from the subliminal region is intense preoccupation of the attention, 
amounting at times almost to a state of ecstasy. The whole being 
seems concentrated upon some one particular thing or complex of 
things. This is a condition favorable to a sort of dissociation of the 
personality, so that while consciousness is fully occupied with its 
own objects mental processes of another kind may be going on inde- 
pendently in the subconscious regions of the personality. If now 
in some cases there be a temporary cessation of attention (and it is 
notorious that attention flags and has its rhythms), that which was 
subconsciously working darts suddenly into the momentarily vacant 
field of consciousness. The suddenness and unexpectedness of this 
invasion again gives the impression of something coming from 
without. A capital illustration of this latter mode of working is to 
be found in an apparition of presence recorded by James : 38 

"On the day above mentioned, October 30, 1886, I was in , 

where I was teaching. I had been performing my regular routine 
work for the day, and was sitting in my room working out trigo- 



38 Psychology, II., 118 ff. 



Communion With God 55 

nometrical formulae. I was expecting every day to hear of the con- 
finement of my wife, and naturally my thoughts for some time had 

been more or less with her. She was, by the way, in B , some 

fifty miles from me. 

"At that time, however, neither she nor the expected event was in 
my mind ; as I said, I was working out trigonometrical formulae, 
and I had been working on trigonometry the entire evening. About 
eleven o'clock, as I sat there buried in sines, sosines, tangents, co- 
tangents, secants, and cosecants, I felt very distinctly upon my left 
shoulder a touch, and a slight shake, as if somebody had tried to 
attract my attention by other means and had failed. Without ris- 
ing I turned my head, and there. between me and the door stood my 
wife, dressed exactly as I last saw her, some five weeks before. As 
I turned she said: 'It is a little Herman; he has come.' Something 
more was said, but this is the only sentence I can recall." 

It is not necessary to give the rest of the account and the story 
of the way in which the hallucination apparently was verified by a 
telegram the next morning. What I wish to point out is that sub- 
consciously the thoughts and desires connected with the writer's 
wife had been working while he was absorbed, "buried" as he says, 
in something entirely different. x\t a favorable moment these 
thoughts which had grown very strong were able to force them- 
selves into the light of consciousness, which I assume to have hap- 
pened at a moment when the wearied attention was relaxed. Com- 
ing in that way, they had the force of an hallucination for him. 
The fact that they happened to be corroborated later does not nec- 
essarily enter into the consideration, especially as James notes that 
the hallucination occurred some five hours before the actual birth 
of the child. 

The bearing of all this upon the mystical states of consciousness 
which we are studying is so obvious that I hardly need to take time 
to point them out. All of the cases of communion with God which 
I have been able to investigate carefully would meet one or the other 
of the two conditions which I have just named: either there was a 
temporary abeyance of the strain of conscious attention or there 
was attention strained almost to the breaking point. In the latter 
case there was usually intense desire for God or for something 
which the person would naturally think a divine being alone could 
give. These are in general the cases in which there is fervent 
prayer preceding the consciousness of communion. In this state of 
tension ideas, beliefs, emotions have a chance to develop powerfully 
unperceived by the consciousness, and at a momentary break in the 



56 Communion With God 

strain of attention have a favorable opportunity to break in upon 
consciousness with hallucinatory force. In the passive cases, es- 
pecially those in which the consciousness of communion comes while 
in the presence of nature, the probabilties are that some impression 
falling suddenly upon the senses awakens a complex of emotions 
which had been slowly maturing out of many accumulating impres- 
sions. The accumulated force of the emotion is experienced for 
the first time, and because of its intensity and uniqueness causes the 
person to feel that it is due to some presence greater than the person 
and greater than nature. 

This theory does not involve any secondary-self conception of the 
subconscious. It is true that sometimes the things which come to 
us from subconsciousness seem to have had an independent elabora- 
tion that would almost suggest a second and deeper and greater self. 
I believe, however, that even the most elaborate products are due to 
associative processes entirely similar to those of waking conscious- 
ness. (It will be recalled that in a quotation given earlier from Coe 
it is said that "the association of ideas is always at least partly 
automatic." See above, p. 47). The final products which come 
into consciousness are combinations resulting from many accumu- 
lated impressions which by natural process of association have 
grouped themselves together, and to which one last impression is 
added. When the sudden last impression strikes the accumulated 
mass and fuses with it, the total and complete mass comes to light, 
often with the most surprising effect. It is thus that I should ex- 
plain the subconscious solutions of problems which had baffled con- 
sciousness, which emerge full-blown into consciousness. Such solu- 
tions always have a strong emotional tone, and I believe that some 
new and unnoticed impression with an emotional tone of similar 
quality touches the spring that releases the accumulated mass. 

These emotional states are awakened by causes which are un- 
known to the individual, and as yet obscure to psychology. In fact, 
the whole question of the emotions is as yet most imperfectly under- 
stood. If the James-Lange theory is accepted, then we must pre- 
suppose some physiological stimulus, either external or visceral, 
which sets the emotion loose and in so doing disengages ideas con- 
nected with it. These experiences would then be in some sense 
forms of instinctive reaction. The human being has an insistent 
desire to explain and to find the causes for his experiences, and 
finding none for these mystical experiences in the world of nature 
as he knows it, he is led to postulate a divine cause. We might as- 
sume that if a bird had such consciousness as man's it would say 



Communion With God 57 

in explanation to its overpowering impulse to wing its way north 
or south at migrating time that something divine told it to do so. 
Man's assumption that God visits him in these experiences is a leap 
of the reason, an act of faith. lit arises from the fact that the only 
realities actually known to him are conscious and personal in nature, 
hence the unknown cause of his inexplicable experience is conceived 
as a divine person similar to himself. 

b. The Psychoanalytical View. 

The psychoanalysts would explain all such phenomena as we are 
investigating as invasions of the consciousness by impulses from the 
unconscious. It is, however, difficult for one who is not a professed 
psychoanalyst to know just what is implied by this statement. As is 
well known, the psychoanalysts are not by any means at one in their 
understanding as to the nature of the unconscious and its effects 
upon the life of the individual. Furthermore, the theory of psycho- 
analysis has been built up almost exclusively on the basis of obser- 
vations made in the field of mental diseases, and the application of 
conclusions so derived to psychology in general would seem to be of 
somewhat questionable validity. I must say that to me personally 
the logical methods of the psychoanalysts seem very often dubious 
in the highest degree. 

I am inclined to say that the central and fundamental thing in the 
theory of psychoanalysis is a doctrine of strict determinism for all 
mental activities. But even that statement must be made with res- 
ervation in view of the divergences between the Vienna and the 
Zurich schools. When one reads Jung's critique of Freud and Ad- 
ler, 39 and his statement of the points of difference between the two 
schools, one wonders if it is possible to state a psychoanalytic view 
of such phenomena as we are studying which will hold good for both 
schools. Determinism of mental activities does seem to be main- 
tained by both schools. Both would also hold that they are deter- 
mined by forces and impulses originating in the unconscious. But 
with that the divergences begin. What is the unconscious, and how 
does it exert its influence upon consciousness? One school answers 
that it is the repressed mass of sexual desires, something obscene that 
is always trying to break forth and to overcome the barriers which 
the moral sense has imposed. It does break forth, but only in dis- 
guised forms, compromises between hidden and hateful desires and 
the morally admissible. The other school answers that this is not 
all there is to the unconscious, that it contains the germs of the 



^Analytical Psychology. Author's Preface. 



58 Communion With God 

future as well as the deposit of the past. With them the uncon- 
scious is the blind expression of the vital energy of the being, it is 
libido. Human mental activities are shaped not only by causes but 
by ends, but both come from the unconscious. 

It is the latter school which has especially busied itself with ques- 
tions in the psychology of religion. Its fundamental position seems 
to be that the gods men worship have one and all been created by men 
•themselves — they are symbols which the action of libido produces. 
When men love them, they love themselves; when men come into 
communion with them they come into communion with themselves. 
Or rather, since the parents play the chief role in the life of the 
person, the gods are magnified images of the parents ; and the re- 
lations to them are governed by the (unconscious) desires of the 
person connected with the parents. God is the magnified image of 
the human father. The idea of God will come with special force 
when some unconscious and largely sexual desire connected with 
the parents is present. All experiences of the kind we are study- 
ing would, then, be at bottom the expressions of a sexual impulse. 
What psychoanalysis has busied itself with is the various ways in 
Which such desires have symbolized themselves, not with the ex- 
periences themselves. (See, for instance, Silberer's Poblems of 
Mysticism and its Symbolism and Pfister's Die Frommigkeit des 
Graf en Ludzvig von Zinsendorf.) We are busied not so much with 
the products of the state as with the state itself. Of that psycho- 
analysis has little to tell us, beyond the vague statement that it is 
an expression of libido and in most instances sexually determined. 

It is, of course, aside from the point to urge the fact that one and 
all my respondents denied a connection of their experiences with 
•the sexual impulse, and that in the published cases this rarely if 
ever comes to light. Psychoanalysis would answer that the indi- 
vidual is not conscious of his sexual impulses and the part they play 
in the psychic life. I can only say that the theories of psycho- 
analysis have not been at all convnicing to me, and admit that I 
have not the training or the opportunity to test the applicability of 
its theories to the explanation of such experiences as we are study- 
ing. 

The remaining theories in explanation of the experiences which 
we are studying may be dismissed more briefly. Not that they are 
all of them of little significance in regard to the study of religion as 
a whole, but they have comparatively little to say to us in the par- 
ticular problem which we are investigating. 



Communion With God 59 

3. The Theory of Social Psychology. 

Social psychology has much of value to tell us regarding religion 
as a whole, but I do not see that it has much of value to offer in 
helping us to understand and to explain the type of consciousness 
we are investigating. The social forces which form the basis of 
its study do, it is true, set the channels in which the meaning of ex- 
periences is formulated by us. Experience means one thing to a 
Melanesian and another thing somewhat different to a highly cul- 
tured European or American. This we have already admitted re- 
garding the expjrier.ee in question. It is at bottom the same psychic 
experience, produced by the same psychical mechanisms, which the 
people of vast]}- different social and cultural environment have; 
and the meaning and nature of the experience will be interpreted 
by different persons i it the light of the religious conceptions to 
which they are accustomed. The gods men worship are many and 
varied; and the gods with whom they believe themselves to have 
come into contact are as many and as varied. Among those of the 
same racial and cultural groups are to be found variations, — those 
to whom God is altogether personal and those to whom God is im- 
personal law, force, energy, the whole. But the point remains that 
in these experiences those who have them believe that they have 
come into contact with what they consider divine. 

As far as the operation of the social laws of suggestion and imi- 
tation are concerned, their working can be clearly demonstrated only 
in those cases in which communion with God occurs during mass 
gatherings of religious character, notably, of course, in the case of 
revival meetings, or on a lower stage in the gatherings of dervishes. 
It is probable that some other experiences of communion with God 
are the result of these forces, which occur in solitude, but for which 
there was preparation in a time not long past. This has been tr'^e 
in the case of conversions which the subjects failed to experience 
while at the revival meeting but did experience a little later. The 
social forces were not strong enough to produce the experience of 
the type normal for the group at the time when they were being 
directly exerted upon the person, but the processes which they 
started working come to maturity a little later. So some persons 
who have come into communion with God in solitude, and to their 
great surprise, may have had the suggestion for it given by the 
hearing or reading of similar experiences on the part of other per- 
sons. Such recitals often produce a deep effect at the time and stir 
in the mind of the one who hears or reads them a desire for exper- 
iences of the same kind on his part. In suggestible minds this might 



60 Communion With God 

conceivably work with sufficient strength to produce such an ex- 
perience at a favorable moment. It is to be noted that in those 
religious bodies which require of their membership personal re- 
ligious experiences of certain definite types — the assurance of sal- 
vation, the guidance of the inner light, and the like — such personal 
religious experiences are forthcoming in a fairly large proportion 
of the membership. The expectation of the group, suggestion, imi- 
tation, tend to produce experiences which conform to the type. 

One of the questions I asked in my questionnaire was, Could your 
experience be explained as the working of social forces — the preva- 
lent conception of God and form of religious experience in the 
social order of which you were a member? Only one of my re- 
spondents answered that he thought it could be so explained. But 
if one who has had the experience in question on looking back could 
explain it in such a way, it is altogether probable that the experience 
of others could be explained in the same way, even when they them- 
selves would not so explain it. I can only leave this as a suggestion. 
To what proportion of cases such an explanation would apply I 
am unable to say. In general, I should say that social factors alone 
would account for only a small percentage of cases, but that social 
factors cooperate with individual factors in a pretty large number 
of experiences. 

4. Attainment of a Higher Form of Consciousness: First Steps in 
a New Stage of Evolution. 

This is the theory which Dr. Bucke maintains for his cases 
of "cosmic consciousness." It is a theory which I mention only in 
passing, because by its very nature it must remain pure hypothesis 
and incapable of demonstration. While it is possible, looking at 
things from an evolutionary point of view, to believe that the end 
of the evolutionary process has not yet been reached, the arguments 
given in support of his theory by Dr. Bucke are in some cases 
merely fantastic, and in no case of compelling urgency. 

C. Predominantly Theological Theories. 

1. The Common Theological View. 

The theological theories also may be named only to dismiss them, 
for the present at least, from our discussion. The common theologi- 
cal view is familiar to all. It is the view which practically all those 
who have had the experience in question hold ; and further the ex- 
perience itself has enormously increased the belief in this view, 
has raised it for many such persons from the stage of a belief held 



Communion With God 61 

by faith to what seems to them first-hand knowledge, as immediate 
and certain as any knowledge a human being can possess. This 
view assumes that there is a personal God who can and does come 
into immediate contact with certain persons. In general it is held 
that He actually does come into contact only with persons of cer- 
tain moral and spiritual qualifications (although it may be recalled 
that Carey, as quoted at the beginning of this study, p. 7, says that 
such experiences have come to many persons who did not have 
these qualifications, in order to reclaim them) ; yet these qualifi- 
cations do not at all guarantee that He will actually come into im- 
mediate communion with a person. It remains a matter of God's 
own choice, and, as far as the human individual is concerned of 
God's free "grace." There is thus always something of the super- 
natural and the unpredictable about such experiences. 

Psychology as such has always resolutely refused to admit such 
a hypothesis. It was held that all psychic phenomena, like all physi- 
cal phenomena, must be subject to regular and ascertainable laws, 
and that they must be fully explicable without the need of calling 
in a supernatural order of things. It admits that there are many 
things which are still unknown to it and unexplained by it, but it 
works on the hypothesis that complete knowledge and explanation 
are within the range of possibility. If we step outside the limits 
which psychology thus lays down we must recognize that we are 
no longer speaking as psychologists, but as philosophers or theolo- 
ians. We are indulging in what James would call an "over-belief." 

How strong a hold this explanation for the experience in question 
has is indicated by the fact that almost without exception my re- 
spondents hold it. I asked the question: What explanation would 
you suggest for the experience? Does it seem to you explicable on 
a purely natural basis, or does it seem to you, in some sense and 
degree, to be supernatural? Would you consider it a direct work- 
ing of God, or the operation of forces in your own personality? 
It was the supernaturalistic interpretation which was given by prac- 
tically all. One answer deserves to be quoted: "Not hallucina- 
tion or working of social forces. Rather, a certain state of con- 
sciousness or a certain harmony between outer and inner opens the 
door, clears the channel so God can show Himself." This, it will 
be noted, assumes divine action, but assumes also that God Him- 
self acts only when certain conditions are fulfilled. Conceivably 
the person might fulfill the conditions and be ignorant of the fact 
and without intention of fulfilling them; much to his surprise, the 
action of God would take place. 



62 Communion With God 

b. Theosophical and Kindred Views. 

It is hard to draw any hard and fast lines between the theological 
views just considered and the theosophical and other views. They 
differ chiefly in their conceptions of God. For the common theologi- 
cal view God, however intimate be the contact into which he comes 
with the human, remains a separate personality. For the ordinary 
person who has such experiences, the analogy that naturally suggests 
itself is some unusually intimate and helpful communion with a 
friend, the two personalities, for all their sympathy and interaction, 
remaining separate and distinct. The theosophical and kindred views 
think of the person as himself a part of the divine. To come into 
communion with the divine is to find the divine within oneself. He 
does not seek for the divine outside himself, as does the ordinary 
theist, but believes that the divine is within him and needs only to 
be unveiled and revealed to the self. Mingled with this are very 
often also ideas of metempsychosis, or that some of the experiences 
are simply reminiscences of truths known in former states of ex- 
istence. The divine may be revealed and communion with it en- 
joyed by means of certain courses of life and practices deliberately 
engaged in. It is obvious that all this belongs rather to a study of 
mysticism per se than to our particular field of study. Much of this 
form of belief and practice is of Eastern origin, some elements of 
which have come into Christian mysticism, where as a matter of 
fact they seem to be out of harmony with the fundamental beliefs 
of Christianity. 

VIII. SUMMARY AND STATEMENT OF CONCLUSIONS. 

It is time now to sum up the work we have undertaken and to try 
to formulate our conclusions. We have undertaken to study a cer- 
tain experience, which is by no means uncommon, a state of con- 
sciousness to which the name "communion with God" has been ap- 
plied by many of those who have had the experience. We have 
cited some typical cases of the experience in question and have for- 
mulated certain questions with regard to it, which we have tried to 
answer in the course of this discussion. 

We have found with regard to the nature of the state of con- 
sciousness in question that it falls within the class of mystical states 
of consciousness, the characteristics of which are, to use James' 
language, ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, passivity. Its char- 
acteristic within the class is that it is sporadic, spontaneous, unin- 
duced by any systematic attempts to attain such a state of conscious- 



Communion With God 63 

ness. It is the undifferentiated mystical experience from which 
mystical practices and beliefs start out. It cannot be sharply dis- 
criminated from kindred states of consciousness in the way of 
psychological process, only by the content and value of the experi- 
ence for him who has it. This means that the consciousness of 
communion with God is a complex psychic product, a combination 
of a psychic process which it shares with other forms of conscious- 
ness and a belief or interpretation added to the psychic process. 

This means, of course, that it is not the simple and direct experi- 
ence that it seems to be. The interpretation may be given at the 
moment of the experience, but it is not a necessary part of the ex- 
perience. As is true of all perception, what is actually perceived 
is a psychic disturbance. The psychic disturbance is referred, 
rightly or wrongly, to some stimulus. In the case of ordinary per- 
ceptions we are able to make test of the interpretation which we 
make as to the cause of the psychic disturbance and can tell whether 
our interpretation is correct or not. In this case the psychic dis- 
turbance is referred to a cause of which we are not able to make 
test, and the experience is claimed as an immediate apprehension of 
a reality which can be apprehended in no other way, to which an- 
other person is not able to apply the ordinary tests of objective 
reality. All that remains for the psychologist, then, is to attempt 
to ascertain whether it is possible" to show that such experiences can 
be fully accounted for as due to the operation of known forces with- 
out the intervention of something supernatural. 

As a first step to an understanding of the experience we inquired 
what conditions hold for it and what circumstances accompany it. 
Little light was thrown on the problem by this investigation, for we 
found that the experience occurs under the most diverse conditions 
and circumstances. Neither age nor mental condition nor physical 
condition shows any constancy as regards the appearance of the 
experience. As far as ascertainable, there is no one, unvarying 
stimulus for such a state of consciousness. 

We then inquired as to the effects and function of the experience. 
We found that the physiological effects are in no way unique, being 
those which in general accompany states of consciousness of high 
emotional intensity, particularly those which are highly pleasurable. 
The mental effects are a raising of the normal level in the attitudes 
of hope, confidence, courage, fortitude, and the like ; a loss of worry, 
doubt, anxiety, and the like. The functional value of the experi- 
ence is then its raising of the subject's vital level. It has the func- 
tions and value of religious experiences in a pre-eminent degree. 



64 Communion With God 

The individual is a more efficient person, from his point of view. 
From the social point of view, the values that attach to religion in 
general attach to this experience. Such experiences form one of 
the great means, along with religious institutions, in perpetuating 
religion and its values in the race. 

We then sought the explanation for such states of consciousness. 
We took up first the medical theories, which are largely material- 
istic, in that they attempt to explain these experiences, as they do 
all conscious processes, as due to conditions of the nervous system. 
The first of these theories presupposes for mystical experiences 
some hyperesthesia, either of the system as a whole or of some por- 
tion of it. We found that this would explain but few of the cases, 
because they occur in conditions of lowered vitality as well, and 
there is no corresponding depression. The second of the theories 
assumed pathological conditions of the nervous system, especially 
of the higher centres and the association tracts. We found that 
while this might be true of some cases, it was gratuitous assumption 
to explain all such experiences in this way. It rests upon the as- 
sumption that the explanation of the extreme cases in which disease 
is clearly demonstrable is to be applied to the less extreme cases, in 
which there is no other indication of disease. The third of the 
medical explanations is that such experiences are instances of hal- 
lucination. This, too, is to be admitted in some cases, but does not 
seem to be capable of being made a universal principle of explana- 
tion. In any case, the hallucinations are psychic or pseudo halluci- 
nations. In cases where great strain or tension preceded the state 
of consciousness hallucination may well be the case, but it is unlikely 
in cases which suddenly come into normal and unstrained states of 
consciousness. Further, even if psychologically they seem to be 
hallucinations, the possibility must be kept open that they may in 
some cases be what the psychical researchers call "veridical." 

Turning to the psychological explanations, we took up first the 
theory of automatism. This fundamental theory for abnormal psy- 
chology offers a plausible explanation for many of the phenomena 
under consideration. Possibly from the psychological point of view 
it is the key to the matter. But we pointed out that, as Dr. Prince 
says, a large number of cases observed at the time, or subjected soon 
after to hypnosis, would be necessary fully to establish the applica- 
bility of the theory to such states as we are studying as a sufficient 
explanation. Since automatisms seem to involve some sort of theory 
of the subliminal or the unconscious, we turned next to a consider- 
ation of the subconscious to see what help it might give us for ex- 



Communion With God 65 

plaining the consciousness of communion with God. It is here that 
I believe we shall find the greatest likelihood of successful explana- 
tion, and I would refer to the section on this topic as fundamental 
to my own understanding of the matter. A specific variation of the 
theory of the unconscious, the psychoanalytic theory, was not found 
to offer much that was helpful. The influence of social factors in 
giving the content of the interpretation put upon the experience by 
those who have it was admitted, as also the fact that social expect- 
ancy may play a role in inducing the experience. The theory that 
we are on the verge of a new stage in evolution, of which such ex- 
periences are the first indications, was rejected as unproved and 
probably unprovable. 

We referred briefly in the end to the theological explanations for 
such states of consciousness, and showed that as an empirical sci- 
ence psychology cannot take them into consideration. 

Do the medical and psychological explanations which we have 
considered offer between them the full explanation of such experi- 
ences? It would seem as if what one does not explain another does. 
I can only express my own private judgment when I say that there 
is a small residuum of cases which do not seem to be fully explained 
by any of these theories, or by all of them together. It seems to me 
that it stands with them as with some of the phenomena which form 
the subject matter of psychical research. There are some things 
which still elude the grasp of psychology. The humble function of 
this essay would be to indicate that fact, and to call for a further 
and much wider study than I have been able to make before the 
matter can be said to be understood in its entirety. 

As to the line along which the full explanation will lie, I can only 
record my own "over-belief" that the theological theory will have to 
be invoked in the end. It does not seem to me that any future re- 
finement of any of the theories I have considered will give us the 
whole truth, or any theory which confines itself wholly to the human 
element in the matter. I believe that those who have had the experi- 
ence were in some cases at least quite right when they said that they 
came into immediate contact with something which was neither the 
person himself nor the physical universe and its forces, but a living 
Presence in, but superior to, both. 



66 Communion With God 

APPENDIX I. 

Questionnaire on the Consciousness of Communion With God. 

1. Have you ever had the consciousness of being in communion 
with God; that is, of being in the presence of God, and receiving 
some immediate communication from him? 

2. Has the experience been (a) single, (b) of rare occurrence, 
(c) of more or less frequent occurrence? 

3. Describe in detail at least one case in which you have had 
the consciousness of being in communion with God, together with 
the attendant circumstances. 



In so far as they have not been already covered by your answer 
to question number 3, kindly give explicit answers to the following 
questions : 

4. With what religious body, if any, are you connected? If 
with some other body at the time of the experience, what one? 

5. Was there anything in the circumstances which might have 
aided in inducing the experience? For example, (a) some crisis 
in your life, or a state of perplexity, doubt, and feeling of the need 
of guidance and direction; (b) participation in a religious revival 
or the like; (c) a recent loss or grief. 

6. I you have had more than one such experience, does there 
seem to be any circumstance which always or usually precedes? 
(b) Do they come with any degree of regularity? (c) What was 
your approximate age at the time of the first experience, and in 
what period have subsequent experiences been most common? 

7. How long does the consciousness of communion last? 

8. Has there been anything in the experience which was of the 
nature of a sense impression ? That is, did you seem actually to see 
a presence, to hear a voice or sound, to feel a touch ? 

9. Was the consciousness of communion clear and intense, or 
vague and indistinct? 

10. During the experience did you retain full possession of your 
ordinary consciousness, or were you more or less in the state of a 
swoon, trance, or the like? 

11. From your communion with God did you receive any tan- 
gible command, counsel, comfort, or the like; or rather an exalta- 
tion of your whole being which could not well be put into words? 

12. Have you ever been able to induce this consciousness by some 
effort of your own ; as, for example, by intense and prolonged 



Communion With God 67 

prayer, by contemplation, by "recollection," by fasting, by mechani- 
cal means of producing an ecstatic state, etc. ; or has the experience 
always been involuntary? 

13. Some writers claim that all such experiences are connected 
with sexual impulse and desire. Would your experience tend to 
verify or contradict this? 

14. What explanation would you suggest for the experience? 
Does it seem to you explicable on a purely natural basis, or does it 
seem to you, in some sense and degree, to be supernatural ? Would 
you consider it a direct action of God, or the operation of forces in 
your own personality? Would you be satisfied if it could be (ap- 
parently conclusively) explained on the theory of hallucination? 
Could it be explained as the working of social forces — the preva- 
lent conception of God and form of religious experience in the 
social order of which you are a member? 

15. What, if any, were the after effects of the experience? For 
instance, a feeling of depression, nervousness, dread, or the like; 
or one of exaltation, courage, confidence, certainty and the like? 
How long did this after effect last? 

16. What value do you attach to the experience? Does it con- 
stitute an integral and important element in your present religious 
belief? 



68 Communion With God 

APPENDIX II. 

On Answers to the Questionnaire. 

As was remarked in the section on method, the answers to the 
questionnaire came in very slowly, and I had to make my study 
chiefly from literary sources. While this is, of course, a limitation, 
I do not regard it as invalidating my results. In such matters as 
these it is not averages and percentages that are significant, but the 
nature of the state itself. It may be remarked that most of the 
theories regarding the unconscious and regarding abnormal psy- 
chology generally have been built up on the basis of a small number 
of cases. Janet remarks, for instance, that only some twenty-five 

T to thirty cases of double or multiple personality are well known. 
(Major Symptoms of Hysteria, Lecture IV.) Yet the smallness 
of the numbers is not held to invalidate the theories built upon 
them. That the form of consciousness studied in this work is much 
more common that the actual returns would indicate seems to be 
the belief of most of those who would have studied religious phen- 
omena. Tertullian's words are often quoted, that in his day the 

- majority, almost, of men learned God through visions. Flournoy 
in his Le genie religieux without stopping to argue the matter as- 
sumes that mystical experiences more or less pronounced form one 
of the two indispensable elements of the genius of religion. James 
gives it as his opinion that mystical states of consciousness are much 
more common than is ordinarily supposed. Pratt tells us that out 
of the 77 answers he received to 500 question lists sent out, 56 
reported more or less definite experiences of communion with God, 
and that 40 out of the 56 held this experience to be fundamental in 
their belief. 

There seem to be two reasons why a good many persons 
who have had such experiences do not relate them when asked to 
do so — at least one or the other of these reasons has often been given 
me when I have urged an answer. The first is simple inability to 
answer the questions I have asked. Power of psychological intro- 
spection is rare. Even persons well trained intellectually find it 
difficult to give accurate answers to such a question list. The 
second reason is unwillingness to relate such experiences. For many 
persons such intimate religious experiences are regarded as too 
sacred to be recounted to any other person. They shrink from ex- 
posure out of pure modesty or regard for the sacredness of the ex- 
perience. Others have the instinctive distrust of intellectual treat- 
ment of the things which seem most precious to them, of which 



Communion With God 69 

James makes note in the opening pages of his Varieties. It would 
follow that any statistical study of such a, state of consciousness, 
even if based upon an indefinitely greater number of cases than I 
have secured, would be of slight scientific value. 

With this preliminary, I may say that I put out about 110 ques- 
tion lists and at the time of writing this study had received 15 re- 
plies which could be made use of. In addition I had received two 
negative replies. Five persons who received the questionnaire 
told me that they had had such experiences, but for one reason or 
another did not wish to make replies ; and four persons told me 
that they had not had any such experiences. I may say, then, that 
in some form or other I received replies from 26 persons out of 
110. It will be noted that the percentage of replies to persons in- 
terrogated is slightly higher than that obtained by Pratt, who got 
77 replies from 500 question lists. It will be noted also that the 
negative replies have about the same percentage — 7 to 26 for me, 
slightly under 27 per cent ; 21 to 77 for Pratt, slightly over 27 per 
cent. Such presumptions as may be drawn from these figures would 
indicate that a large number of lists put out and answers received 
would bring the same results as I have drawn from the small num- 
ber. It is rather interesting to note that Pratt found (after making 
all deductions) that 11 persons in a hundred have had the experience 
of communication with God, I with smaller numbers found 17 in a 
hundred. The chances are that with more replies I should have 
found my percentages somewhat reduced. 



70 Communion With God 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES CONSULT- 
ED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS STUDY. 

Abelson, J. Jewish Mysticism. London. 1913. 

Allones, G. R. de. Psychologie d'une religion. Paris. 1908. 

Ames, Edward Scribner. The Psychology of Religious Experience. Boston 

and New York. 1910. 
BARTLETr, Lucy C. My Inner Life. In Amer. Jour. Rel. Psych, and Educ. 

Ill (1906), 210-235. 
Barrow, George A. The Validity of the Religious Experience. Boston. 1917. 
Bucke, Richard Maurice. Cosmic Consciousness. Philadelphia. Edition of 

1905. 
Burr, Anna R. Religious Confessions and Confessants. Boston. 1914. 
Coe, George Albert. (1) The Spiritual Life. Philadelphia. 1903. 

(2) Sources of the Mystical Revelation. In Hibbert Journal, VI (1908), 

359-372. 

(3) The Psychology of Religion. Chicago. 1916 (3rd Impression, 1917). 
Coriat, Isador H. Abnormal Psychology. New York. 1910. 

Cutten, George B. The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity. New 

York. 1908. 
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Jour. Psych. VI (1893), 61-106. 
Davenport, Frederick Morgan. Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals. New 

York. 1905 (reprint of 1910). 
Delacroix, Henri, fitudes d'histoire et de psychologie du mysticisme. Paris. 

1908. 
Drake, Durant. Problems of Religion. Boston. 1917. 
Flournoy, Th. Le Genie religieux. Pamphlet — undated, ? 1904. 
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated from third 

German Edition. London. 1914. 
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Third Amer. from third French edition. New York and London. 1911. 
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brary.) New York. 
Hepher, Cyril. (1) The Fellowship of Silence. London. 1915. 

(2) The Fruits of Silence. London. 1915. 
Herman, E. The Meaning and Value of Mysticism. Boston and London. 

N. d. ? 1915. 
Hocking, William Earnest. The Meaning of God in Human Experience. 

New Haven, Yale Univ. Press. 1912. 
Hyslop, James H. The Borderland of Psychical Research. Boston. 1906. 
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(Reprint of 1917). 
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(2) The Major Symptoms of Hysteria. New York. 1907 (reprint of 
1913). 
Jastrow, Joseph. (1) Fact and Fable in Psychology. Boston. 1900. 

(2) The Subconscious. Boston. 1906. 

(3) The Psychology of Conviction. Boston. 1918. 



Communion With God 71 

Joly, Henri. The Psychology of the Saints. Second Ed. London. 1913. 
Jones, Ernest. (1) The Theory of Symbolism. In British Journal of Psy- 
chology, IX (1918, 181-229. 

(2) Why is the "Unconscious" Unconscious? lb., 247-57. 
Jones, Rufus M. A Boy's Religion from Memory. Philadelphia. 1913. 
Jung, C. G. (1) Analytical Psychology. Authorized Trans, edited by Dr. 
Constance E. Long. New York. 1916. 
(2) Psychology of the Unconscious. Authorized Trans, with Introduc- 
tion, by Beatrice M. Hinkle. New York. 1916. 
King, Irving. (1) The Differentiation of the Religious Consciousness. Mon- 
ograph Supplement to the Psychological Review, VI (1904), No. 4. 
(2) The Development of Religion. New York. 1910. 
Leuba, James H. (1) A Psychological Study of Religion. New York. 1912. 

(2) The Belief in God and Immortality. New York. 1917. 

(3) Extatic Intoxication. In Amer. Jour. Psych. XXVIII (1917), 578 ff. 
McDougall, William. Social Psychology. Boston. 3rd ed. 1911. 
Montague, Margaret P. Twenty Minutes of Reality: An Experience, with 

some illuminating letters concerning it. New York. 1917. (Originally 
published in Atlantic Monthly anonymously, vol. 117 (1916), pp. 590 ff.) 

Moses, Josiah. The Pathological Aspects of Religion (Dissertation). Wor- 
cester, Mass. 1906. 

Murisier, E. Les maladies du sentiment religieux. Paris. 1903. 

Nicholson, Reynold A. The Mystics of Islam. London. 1914. 

Nicoll, Maurice. Why is the "Unconscious" Unconscious? In British Jour- 
nal of Psychology, IX (1918), 230-6. 

Nordau, Max. Degeneration. Translated from 2nd German edition. New 
York. 1895. 

Pfister, Oskar. (1) Die Frommigkeit des Graf en Ludwig von Zinzendorf. 
Leipzig und Wien. 1910. 
(2) The Psychoanalytic Method. Authorized Translation by Charles 
Rockwell Payne. New York. 1917. 

Podmore, Frank. Modern Spiritualism. London. 1902. 

Poulain, R. P. Aug. The Graces of Interior Prayer. Translated from the 
sixth edition by Leonora L. Yorke Smith. London. 1910. 

Pratt. James Bissett. The Psychology of Religious Belief. New York. 1907. 

Prince, Morton. (1) The Dissociation of a Personality. New York. 1905. 
(2) The Unconscious. New York. 1914 (reprint of 1916). 

Putnam, James Jackson. Human Motives. New York. 1915. 

Raymond, George Lansing. The Psychology of Inspiration. New York and 
London. 1908. 

Recfjac, E. Essay on the Bases of the Mystic Knowledge. Translated by 
Sara Carr Upton. New York. 1899. 

Ribot, Th. The Psychology of the Emotions. London and New York. 
? (Reprint of 1914). 

Rivers, W. H. R. Why is the "Unconscious" Unconscious? In British Jour- 
nal of Psychology, IX (1918), 236-46. 

Sidis, Boris. The Psychology of Suggestion. New York. 1898 (Reprint of 
1909). 

Silberer, Herbert. Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism. Translated 
by Smith Ely Jelliffe. New York. 1917. 



&- 



72 Communion With God 

Smith, Preserved. Luther's Early Development in the Light of Psycho- 
analysis. In Amer. Jour. Psych. XXIV, 360 ff. 

Starbuck, Edwin D. The Psychology of Religion. London and New York. 
1899. 

Steven, George. The Psychology of the Christian Soul. Cincinnati and New 
York. n. d. ? 1911. 

Stratton, George Malcolm. Psychology of the Religious Life. London. 1911. 

Sully, James. Illusions. ? 1881 (Reprint of 1888). 

Woolston, H. B. The Psychology of Mysticism. Religious Emotion. In 
Amer. Jour. Psych. XIII (1902), 62-79. 



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